The current state of the world and how it is rapidly changing is a great source of inspiration for those wanting to express their ideas about it through some form of artistic medium.  It is not surprising therefore that final year students of the Whitireia Devised Theatre programme have done just that in their show MOM (Meet Our Mom), currently playing at Bats Theatre.

The title of their work symbolises the many aspects of the noun “mother”: Mother Earth, Mother Nature, a human Mother and the birth that each of these brings to the world.

A large bird like creature rises up over the stage at the beginning of the production, representing the birth of the world and passes through at strategic moments to then finally come to rest centre stage at the end. [More] 

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It is 25 years since Gary Henderson, Shane Bartle, Emma Robinson, Tina Cook and Toni Gordon created and presented The Big Blue Planet Earth Show for the Fringe Festival, at BATS. Three story strands – involving a school project about endangered species, the hunting to extinction of a species of South American monkey and the use of a solo space flight to remove a top-secret cargo from Planet Earth – were played out by four actors who covered 22 roles and never left the stage. It went on to win a Fringe Award for Excellence at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in 1992.

I am fascinated, therefore, to see how a new generation (a dozen Third Year Applied Arts devisor/performers* from Whitireia NZ, mentored in their devising by Richard Dey) will approach the ever more pressing environmental issues with MOM: Meet Our Mum.

We get our first taste on the pavement outside BATS, where a homeless person huddles over a cardboard sign: ‘MOM told me to wait here. I’ve lost her.’ This person punctuates the ensuing play with a sequence of signs that encapsulate the mother/child relationship while he makes poetically oblique references to sabre-tooth tigers.

Mother Earth is played as a grounded and very sick albatross, which the ensemble bathes gently from time-to-time, having stripped her of her plumage: an image that seems to confuse the metaphor somewhat despite its caring nature.

Various thematic and narrative threads unravel and intertwine over 80 minutes.

An African man tells us avarice has been our undoing, sings for equality as he laments his dead ancestors, and reminds us that slavery, colonisation and the lust for power have brought us to this sorry state. Elsewhere the assumed superiority of white races and the accidental birth right of privilege are duly questioned.

A TV journalist attempts to get Vox Pops from apathetic people in the street, and he gravitates from being obnoxious to seeming to care about the planet. By contrast, a suited but dishevelled man has no other purpose in life than to be Famous – and when he hits on a sure-fire strategy, we, as voracious voyeurs, are implicated.

When a couple find themselves pregnant, the prospective mother lists all the ills of the world and questions whether they should bring a new life into it. She does give birth, however, and goes on to head a new political party aiming to revolutionise (Bernie Sanders-style) the values on which the world is governed.

Meanwhile another mother is trying to find her hospitalised son and ais stymied by bureaucracy at every turn. And a couple who seek to be self-sufficient and live sustainably well away from the city are ridiculed for their pains.

A highly caricatured glossy couple anchor Pasty News with a smug arrogance that becomes increasingly bizarre. A grotesquely fat guy called James (simplistically overblown in every respect) represents both the media moguls who rule the airwaves and the corporate power exerted over politicians. The speech texts he gives the politician to read, having ‘generously’ funded her, come straight from the Trump lexicon.

The ingredients have certainly been assembled for a potent show and as it cooks over the next few nights it may become the piquant piece it wants to be. Ideally a designated and qualified playwright could take this raw material away and enrich it by bringing the themes and narratives together into a distilled totality that resonates well beyond its component parts. Then it would take a designated and qualified director to ensure that the acting, design and technical elements are brought together to realise the full potential of the work.

As it stands, on opening night anyway, MOM: Meet Our Mum plays out as less than the sum of its parts. The script is too often ‘on the nose’ to effectively impart its message, and the staging is messy, not least because the limitations of BATS’ Dome space have not been recognised or embraced. With no proper wings for a cast this size, I can’t help wondering if the ‘cast on stage all the time’ convention would be a better option.

That said, the company is clearly dedicated, they work hard and well together, and there are talents apparent which I look forward to seeing more of.

While I realise this is advanced course work which would normally not be reviewed, because the learning opportunities are what is important, Theatreview has accepted the invitation to review it because it is presented in the public domain at a trusted venue with normal ticket prices. BATS is to be commended for offering these students the opportunity but comparisons with the recent Young & Hungry season – Bloody Hell Jesus…, Like Sex and Dead Days – not to mention The Big Blue Planet Earth Show, are inevitable and valid.

*Becca Hughes, Haydn Carter, Cary Stackhouse, Ashleigh Waters, Blaze O’Sullivan, Makuei Aken, Chadwynn Tohu, Penrose Simons, Kasiano Mita, Connor Tomlinson, Finn McCauley and Ivan Siemonek.

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