There’s this thing about opening nights, they’re often like a whole whānau gathering.

The first night of the single Q Theatre Matchbox Season offering for 2024, Our Own Little Mess, certainly bears this out. I caught up with some special people I hadn’t seen for some time, watched others from a distance chatting animatedly in groups, beverages in hand waiting to enter the performance space, and noted even greater numbers as we assembled in the Q Loft performance space for the show, a show, I have to say, the like of which I haven’t seen for a very long time.

It was all quite illuminating, I thought, my inner voices having a field day. Mostly they screamed ‘hide’.

They (who the hell are ‘they’) say ‘good things take time’ and Our Own Little Mess fits that bill perfectly. The Director’s Note in the excellent digital programme sums it all up by describing A Slightly Isolated Dog’s journey with this production as ‘incredible’, a work that has ‘survived a lot — a pandemic, several lockdowns, a cost-of-living crisis, a funding crisis, a baby. Our Own Little Mess has got battle scars.’

‘Not really evident’ says the annoying voice, yawning. Another responds, ‘of course it has and, apart from the pēpē, we’ve all been on that very same journey.’

Bloody Covid. Shut everything down for me too. For us. Shut everything down. Except the voices. Nothing shuts them up.

Curtain speeches, and a couple of pre-show and post-show chats, reinforce the ‘cost-of-living crisis, funding crisis’ experience. According to the Finance Minister it’ll all be OK in a couple of weeks, perfect in fact, when the tax cuts kick in, but I don’t think anyone working in the arts (or sport, or health, the environment, or climate change) is holding their breath.

Austerity is the coalition rule of thumb with government ‘slash and burn’ buddies Bill English and Lester Levy leading the way, and any post-Covid hope we might have had has become a far distant dream obliterated by the nightmare of The Willis and Luxon Way. Anyway, that’s my inner narrative and the voices all seem to nod in semi-silent agreement.

Seriously, though, Our Own Little Mess has survived and is in very good shape because of the champions who have nourished and sat alongside it, believing in it when the Directors were starting to lose themselves ‘in a marathon of a process’.

It’s big, that’s for sure.

‘It takes a village to raise a show.’ Thank you for noting that. It also takes a village to make a show. The programme reminds us that ‘the creatives engaged in this devising process have brought their hearts, minds and stories to this work, collaborating to explore a central question: how do we live? With ourselves, with each other, in a world that is constantly shifting, changing, and burning. How do we celebrate our loneliness, grief, yearning and joy?’

It’s an evasive little piece, that’s for sure. I get little from the marketing blurb that helps and what I do get is tantalising. Oh well, best get on with it.

Q Theatre is always a pleasure to visit. This time the staff I speak to seem more anxious than usual about the future. It doesn’t affect their work though, they’re true professionals.

In the words of the creators, ‘Our Own Little Mess is an offbeat and innovative theatrical experience, where audiences are given headphones to listen in real-time to the inner thoughts of the characters. Following the seemingly unconnected lives of five people, the show will celebrate the beauty of the mundane and the mysteries of the human inner voice.’

Mundane? Maybe you should decide.

We’re welcomed into the darkened theatre and take our seats in the third row. Performers, I note, are already in place, a group of two and another group of three. ‘Five’, I muse, ‘an odd number, I hope that works OK. Odd numbers often don’t’. I tell the voice to be silent. For once it obeys.

It should, it’s me after all.

On my seat there is a set of headphones hooked over the back. All the remaining empty seats have them too. The Tannoy has told us it’s OK to wear them with hearing aids and I’m unreasonably pleased because, for once, I’m wearing mine. I put the headphones on. My spouse tells me the one covering my left ear is turned outwards. I try to work out how to fix it and can’t. She comes to the rescue and does it for me. I can hear someone speaking quietly to me. Two voices, one a woman. My spouse gently nudges me and tells me that each earpiece is directional. I take them off and check. Sure enough, I’ve got them on the wrong ears. I feel stupid, a Luddite, and put them on properly. My voice tells me I’m an idiot. As though I don’t already know that.

The voices prepare us for what’s to come, and I disappear, alone, into a solitary aural realm for the next ninety minutes. The stage comes alive, and I can hear the actual voices of the actors, speaking as we all do, but I hear their inner dialogue as well. It’s comforting to know that they have inner voices and it’s not just me. Less comforting is that I can hear them embedded in my dialogue. I thought only I could do that.

It becomes clear that the performance journey we have embarked on is one of individual narratives that don’t seem to connect or interact except with themselves. The actors make themselves known and play out their stories, their fears and anxieties on show, vulnerable and raw. I think of Pirandello’s six characters and become anxious about this audience response to what seems to be a relentless, five-way, expressionistic stream of consciousness – revolutionary, dadaist, Walter Gropius and his ‘comprehensive artwork’, Eastern European – and hope we’ll be kinder to directors Leo Gene Peters & Jane Yonge than Pirandello’s opening night crowd were to him.

The seamless technicals – sound, light, audio – are unmatched. I note that this is beautiful work, the devised characters rich and deep, the performances exquisite, demanding nothing, nothing over the top or shallow, balanced and perfect in this dangerous world of inner self-reproach and the ongoing search for gratification and identity.

The scenarios come and go, the narratives play out, and I find myself in a world of one, shut out of the usual theatre experience by the headphones and the need to be on top of my receptive/responsive game. The technology enables me to be an integral part of the work – I am at the railway station, in the gallery, I am in the gay club, I am at the fortune tellers – I morph into the worlds of the performance and am deeply satisfied by this rare and wonderful experience. I am anxious about letting go but the show does that for me. It’s over, and the dreadfulness of living is replaced by a serene and tranquil pleasure and sense of unity.

The performers/devisors are all great. As paint, they create a collective palette that is extraordinary and mind-bogglingly unique. I can’t speak highly enough of all of them. Devising is hard, balance difficult to attain, retain, and maintain, and it draws on the deepest parts of the self, but Jack Buchanan, Laurel Devenie, Andrew Paterson, Isla Mayo, and Maaka Pohatu really do the business. A special mention for Isla Mayo who took over from Louise Jiang and developed Louise’s creation of Mary Kat Evangeline adding yet another layer of actor complexity to an already deliciously intricate web.

Then, it’s back to the real world of the opening night. We eat complimentary squid and the best chips ever, enjoy speeches, wine and Karma Cola, then exit into the night, to our favourite pizzeria, and home. We talk about the show, exchange views on how it made us feel, and agree that it was out of this world in a very, very good way. Drugs were mentioned and, to be honest, it is fairly trippy in places but, again, in a very good way.

I’d like to hope you will go. It’s unique work in its conception and its performance. If you do take my advice, it’ll be helpful for you to know that there’s no interval, but there is strobe, haze, simulated gunfire, loud sounds, along with themes of isolation and death. The headphones are brilliant and the whole shebang is really well managed.

The creative team – Leo Gene Peters, director and lighting designer, director Jane Yonge, designer Meg Rollandi, sound and technical designer/audio mix engineer Sam Clavis, composer Dr Jeremy Mayall, dramaturg the always excellent Nathan Joe, and lastly cognitive neuroscientists Dr David Carmel and Dr Gina Grimshaw from Victoria University Wellington who bring wisdom and a profound knowledge of the brain – all help assemble this astonishing jigsaw, make it a fabulous work and one to be truly treasured.

Oh, and thanks also to wee Jimmy who apparently keeps everyone on their toes.

The final words go to the company: ‘Our Own Little Mess is a mash-up of the creative company’s collective hopes, dreams, anxieties, fears and twisted sense of humour. It’s a journey into the void, the underworld, the desert, and back again.’

It’s all that, and more.

A note from scientific collaborators Drs Gina Grimshaw and David Carmel from Victoria University of Wellington: ‘We are interested in understanding the experience of inner speech. When the show is over, ask yourself: Did the show capture how your inner speech sounds? How does your own inner speech work? Please contribute to our research by filling out the 5-minute survey in the electronic programme Responses will be entered into a draw to win two tickets to a future Q Theatre production.

Sounds good, and the survey is fun too.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Only four more chances to see Our Own Little Mess in Wellington, at Circa One: tonight, twice tomorrow and Sunday. Book now – trust me – then read on.

If the sight of people wearing headphones in public puts you off, think again. It is the opposite of alienating when we are all listening to the same stories, intimately shared. Yes, we are all in our own little bubbles, yet we are collectively engaged in a communal experience at an even more intimate and personal level than theatre usually offers.

The paradox of human existence, of the emotionally and psychologically epic journeys in the everyday lives of ordinary people, is at the heart of Our Own Little Mess. While the central theme is loneliness, we all feel included.

As we settle and don our ’phones, the actors lurk round microphones in the half-light of a stage space where intriguing structures are semi-visible, observing us, murmuring to each other and to us. They promise everything will be peaceful and good, get us to breathe iiinnn and oooout together … and the journeys begin. I will sketch in the basic ideas of each but you have to be there to immerse yourself in the full empathetic experiences.

Mary Kay Evangeline (Louise Jiang) is visiting her mother’s grave at Makara Cemetery and grappling with her grief. Her inner monologue is interrupted by the arrival of a koro who talks to his late wife every day … Mary Kay will jump on a plane to the other side of the world and hostel-hop through an eclectic range of experiences …

As Amelia (Laurel Devenie) reads gently to her daughter Nova, in bed, folk tales about wolves blend with hints of Amelia’s own story. These recurring sequences will mash up the poetic and prosaic ways that make perfect sense despite their objective absurdity. Her husband heads overseas and their attempts to communicate via the internet break up (but they don’t). Meanwhile Nova (voice over) takes more and more control of the narratives …

A university academic, Te Whāinga (Maaka Pohatu), travels to conferences and takes the opportunity while at the mic to explain that because te ao Māori values the collective over the individual, there is no te reo word for loneliness – but there are words for related feelings, or rather for feeling unrelated. It will emerge Te Whāinga leads a solitary life – not to be confused with Pohatu’s fractured FaceTime appearances as Amelia’s itinerant husband.

We meet Liam (Jack Buchanan) at a Rita Angus Retirement Home, entertaining the residents with his fluffy glove puppet Eric. I’m thinking Buchanan has added ventriloquism to his many skills until they sing together about falling and longing for change. And Liam will also head off, to the USA in his case, in a quest that leads him to a desert …

Andrew Patterson, who has been busy facilitating other people’s stories – as they all do for each other, by moving mobile rooms, tables, a mirror, lights and mics, and playing or voicing incidental characters – becomes Albert, a Kiwi guy working as an Art Gallery Attendant in New York. He feels like a misfit until he finds connection in a gay club.

While familiar tropes from myths and our daily lives abound, everything feels very real and true. The seemingly random flitting between storylines is somehow familiar too and is in no way confusing. There is even space in our engagement with the rich stew of stories, conveyed ingeniously with simple sound and image technology, to feel wonder and admiration at the actors’ abilities to know who they need to be and what they need to do next. It’s a long-distance steeplechase for them – plus Show Operator Tony Black with Technical Stage Manager & Audio Assistant Joel Orme – and a mesmerising dreamscape for us.

The Co-Creator credits go to the five Performers and Leo Gene Peters, who is also the Lighting Designer and Co-Director with Jane Yonge. Their creative collaborators are Dramaturg Nathan Joe, Production Designer Meg Rollandi, Sound & Technical Designer and Audio Mix Engineer Sam Clavis, Composer Dr Jeremy Mayall and producer Sums Selvarajan (SquareSums&Co).   

The collaboration has also involved Victoria University of Wellington Cognitive Scientists Dr David Carmel and Dr Gina Grimshaw, and their “examinations of how the brain works, in particular the fascinating and murky territory of a person’s ‘inner speech’, the various ways that one silently ‘speaks’ to oneself” (well known in literature as the inner voice/ inner monologue/ inner dialogue).

Our Own Little Mess sets a very high bar for NZ Festival shows worth going to. It deserves a long life and to travel far and wide, like its characters and their audiences who accompany them vicariously. If you haven’t already, book now!

Footnote:
In seeking “to create live performances where audiences can communally reflect and celebrate life [with theatre that] meets a unique and vital need for human connection”, A Slightly Isolated Dog established their brand with such memorable experiences as Don Juan, camping it up in faux-French accents while exploring profound themes. But it all started with Death and the Dreamlife of Elephants in 2009 which was revived in 2011 and a quote from my second review is used to promote Our Own Little Mess: “…wondrously theatrical mix of hyper-naturalism, magic realism and surrealism … the constant recognition of true human experience.” Yes, all that is still true but this is ‘next level’, thanks to the headphones. Not to be missed!

UPDATE (24/02): Sadly, due to cast illness the Sat 24 and Sun 25 Feb performances of Our Own Little Mess by A Slightly Isolated Dog have been cancelled. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer