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Carine Stewart March 28th, 2013

Just wanted to add to the conversation by posting this review by Peter Howland (with permission), which was added to the NeverBefore Facebook group on 12 March, 2013.

Well done – greatly enjoyed the play and especially the highly amusing, ironic take on the current crop of liberally-inclined, though now techno-hip, fun-loving and story-suckling individuals who believe the romanticised hype surrounding all neo-forms of humanism, environmentalism, virtualism and every other idealism, but who have tragically swallowed wholesale the neoliberal flimflam of individualism and thus believe their personal responses – emotional, social and narrative – are significant opportunities for positive social change. Especially liked the 'straight' character of Frida/Fran who offered no solutions other the comparative pragmatism and immediate realism of bureaucratic process.

It is also so tedious – the perpetual rallying against apathy – NeverBefore, yeah right. The apocalypse may all end in a rush, but in reality it’s been a steady state decline ever since the domestication of plants and animals and the accordant structural stratification of society 5000 years ago. But let’s face it we all want to be loved – that is to have genuine trust in intimate others, and positive and enduring change will only result from absolute and radical overhaul of the fundamentals of economics and politics. So much appropriation of Marxist rhetoric, so little understanding of his theories.

The evening was greatly enhanced by the atmospheric and appositely lyrical music, and also by shifting between modes of performance that highlighted a similar shifting of the personas and politics of the lead characters (an infuriating condition of post-modernity – no one ever knows who they are talking to or who’s listening). Again well done – eagerly await the next effort!

Lee Posna March 27th, 2013

This review has several virtues: the reviewer is forthright about his expectations, implicitly clear about his understanding of the parameters of drama and more or less even-handed in his personal responses. He nicely contextualizes Never Before with other performances and provides us with its setting (The Moorings). The plot summary, while arguably carrying the burden of this review to the detriment of a more meticulous evaluation, is eloquent and engaging. Finally, the last word on the play, that it needs ‘editing to reach its potential’, is undeniably true.

                The review fails, however, to acknowledge a very basic feature of Never Before, namely, that it is satire. The reviewer expresses confusion as to the ‘point’ of the play or of certain of its elements. Apparently taking the opening device seriously, he voices his disappointment at the broken ‘promise [of] “New Zealand’s First Ever Apathy Tours”’, throwing up his hands: ‘Oh well, who cares … Is that the appropriate answer?’ Is this response itself to be taken in earnest? It would be easier to tell if an open discussion of satire were an integral part of the review. Again, he takes in earnest the purported form (the open meeting) of the event, and is only disabused of this impression after some time: ‘repeated promises to open it to the floor turn out to be a theatrical device’. And again, the play ‘los[es] its way in terms of its quest, which may or may not be the point’. Without comprehending the genre of this play, which, I’d argue, is fairly obvious, it’s harder to see its merits and flaws accurately.

                To speak first of the play’s shortcomings, adding to and modifying the reviewer’s conclusions.Never Before, as he rightly but reductively points out, lacks absolute coherence. This is not a categorical indictment on the variety of media employed, the meta-theatrical scenes, or the arrangement of the various parts in general, most of which I found informative, complicating and pleasing. I think the major problem with coherence lay in the gradual divergence of tone between scene and music.

The tone of Urban Tramper’s electronic music is complex and ambiguous. It is difficult to define the predominant emotion of any of the six songs we heard. ‘Melancholy’, ‘angsty’, ‘euphoric’... Each contains all of these and others in varying proportions to produce a difficult colour you wouldn’t paint your lounge. While early on in the play these songs in their (productive) ambiguity are open to coincide with the more easily definable satiric (i.e. comic, with a ‘visible core’ (Ashbery’s phrase) of constructive social criticism) tone, they start to drift apart after about the third song. Think of your car’s alignment being slightly off; at first it carries on straight enough, but soon you begin to see the problem. So after the first few songs the audience begins to notice the incongruity between these and the scenes, and this broken unity strains the auditor’s engagement.

                The play is too long, but not by that much. An unfortunate accident of miscommunication led to this play being advertised as an hour in length. Also, it seems that tradition dictates the length of Fringe Festival shows to be approximately one hour. Both facts may have misled and taxed the audience. The impression of excessive length in my opinion derives largely from the problem of tone discussed above. This problem tries our patience and breaks our suspension of disbelief (or whatever the equivalent is for a postmodern play), and the result is that we feel the play is too long. Is it possible that our attenuated attention spans exacerbate the effect? If so, that is a problem the playwrights have to contend with. I reckon if a couple scenes were trimmed and a couple songs cut, reducing the play by about 15 or 20 minutes max, then the length would be perfect.

                Finally, a few small missteps cannot escape the charge of incongruity and gratuitousness, especially the dancing number and the last video. 

                As for the play’s merits, they are numerous. First, the script is outstanding. The charge against some scenes as ‘overwritten’ can be easily dismissed once we recognize the satirical nature of the play. Of course they are overwritten – that’s the point. We might as soon charge Oscar Wilde with overwriting. The purple-ness of some passages is pleasing and informative in its absurdity, a key element of satire. Late in the play we hear the impassioned Sky Williams cry, ‘This is the climax! The idea of the apocalypse as a dark orgasm we can all experience at the same time, the universe shuddering into consciousness of itself!’ This is the extravagant stuff of satire. Earlier, Williams proclaims with intense sobriety, ‘This is the age of the apocalypse. We can feel its approach. We can sense that our times are charged with a strange energy. Some kind of electric threat emitted by a dying future. And most of those in positions of real influence (points to Ban Ki Moon) are at best wringing their hands or at worst hastening its onset’. Beneath this demagogic rhetoric lies a serious anxiety that reflects the gravity of our real crisis and its call to action. His exhortations almost always embody this duality. If they wear thin by the end of the show, so do all exhortations when repeated ad nauseam, worn down to bald sentiments and the sonic bones of mere words. This is the point.

                Urban Tramper’s performance was excellent. Lake’s voice is strong and emotive, his melodies are surprising but inevitable, strange and complex as our age is strange and complex. These are original and talented musicians writing relevant music capably and convincingly, with a mixture of earnestness and irony proper to our moment, neither straining in one nor hiding in the other. Nonetheless, as discussed earlier, the play might have benefitted from the excision of a couple songs.

               Lastly, the acting was on the whole stellar. Skye Williams (Sven Adam) excelled in his part as ingenuous idealist, convincing us with his voluble circumlocutions and defensively channelled energy. I was there on the opening night when Williams got snagged on a couple lines in the early monologues, but after these slight, early throat-clearing moments he acted with perfect fluency. Frida Corsaire (Tara O’Brien), if somewhat less dynamic, acted with equal grace. My favourite and the star among the supporting actors was Brain Action Mike (Louis Tait). His deft execution of swift, torqued lines was hilarious.

                Never Before does need some editing to reach its potential, which is great. It is a satire that achieves a fine balance of substantial comedy and resonant depth, addressing the supremely relevant and extraordinary incongruity between the near-bankruptcy of 21^st century western culture and the tremendous force of imminent crisis.