Hands up those who knew this was NZ Peace Week and that last Monday was the 62nd anniversary of the dropping of a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima? 

To mark the occasion and remind us all that annihilation of life as we know it on the planet is just a button push away – or a series of secret codes known to a select few, to be more precise – eight performer-writers, three designers and a production team have come together with director L’hibou Hornung to create and present a thought-provoking revue called Nuclear Zephyr.

Set designer Kate Logan’s column of white gauze, within which a white-clad woman stands motionless, offers a compelling centrepiece. The majestic beauty of a nuclear explosion remains a mind-blowing paradox. And the violin music the woman – Aneela Pancha – plays throughout the hour or so will warm, chill and haunts us.

Welcome Aboard, the opening sequence – written by Penny Wilson, Jack Buchanan, Kushani Gunawardana and Alexis Luo, and performed by the whole company – is one of the best. It parodies an airline safety demonstration to devastating effect, predicated as it is on the inevitability of a nuclear disaster or attack. Scarily funny. .

Silo of the Century, written in two episodes by Ants Heath and fronted by him and Jack, allows for many disturbing facts to be imparted under the guise of a popular quiz show.  

Beginning with The Hum, Ban Abdul has written – and performs with Chris Neels – an extraordinary five-part sequence involving two American service personnel guarding a nuclear weapons facility. In this evolving relationship between two quite ordinary but politically opposed people, Ban captures an insightful microcosm of the all-too-human fears, failings and foibles that set us on the path to mutually assured destruction.

A two-part sketch involving a couple of Kiwi farmers – written by Chris, Jack and Penn, and performed by Chris and Jack – plays with the idea of a taciturn anti-Greenie farmer who writes suspect love poetry to his cow Bessie, and finally expresses his vision of a mutant future through his undying love for her. Ingenious.

These memorable elements are punctuated by more standard sketch fare, like a commercial for Australia as the ideal nuclear waste dump facility, some acrobatic dance sequences, and a rather quaint and out-of-place piece on the value of music.

A voice-over poem by Aneela Pancha, entitled Isn’t it amazing …?, completes the show as Glen Ashworth’s lighting and Emile De la Ray’s sound design conspire to evoke the conflagration … Having reminded us what has occurred and evolved over billions of years, Aneela confronts us with the prospect that it could all be taken away "in an instant, with the press of a single button … / And then we might think of the tree / that falls in the forest with no witness and ask ourselves / "Does it matter that Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa / If there is no-one left to remember it?"

This return of political satire in such focused forms, where the message is never subverted by the medium, is very welcome. The script for Welcome Aboard should be distributed to drama teachers at high schools all over the country and a staging challenge for students. And Ban Abdul’s The Hum (etc) has the potential to become a short play in its own right.

Producer Katrina Baylis and director L’hibou Hornung are to be congratulated for facilitating the development and production of such a timely and provocative show.
  

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