As playwright Arthur Meek himself describes it, Sheep combines moments of family history and national history. Seven separate short plays that can be taken in isolation form a collective story providing snapshots of both New Zealand’s development and the growth of the Prout / McMillan / Holt family tree that links New Zealand and Germany. 

The Bats foyer features a depiction of the family tree on the Sheep publicity board. It’s a shame no-one thought to include that as part of the programme – it would have been a useful addition.

Within each generation, a recurring theme of man’s relationship to machines (or technology in the latter scenes) is explored – from 19^th century shearing technology, world war two pistols and nuclear bombs, to Skype. This contrasts to the recurring motif from nature of a yellow-eyed penguin that appears in several forms at various points. Not to mention, of course, the good old ubiquitous Kiwi sheep.

The issue of women’s rights – a ‘stroppy’ prostitute, a sister dependent on her brother’s will, a female mechanic, rape, contraception – is another ever-present theme that runs through the scenes.

Performance designer Daniel Williams has turned Bats into a shearing shed, with wooden boards and corrugated iron walls. Loose wool cuttings are discarded around the stage and occasionally used in creative ways, such as the cover for a boom mike in a scene featuring a television crew. As a nice touch (and health & safety nightmare!), corrugated iron is used to lower the height of the side doors at the back of the stage, forcing actors to make their entries and exits as a sheep would.

Thomas Press introduces each scene with audio from news items relevant to each period and together with Nathan McKendry’s lighting, imbues each scene and its segues with dramatic tension. 

In Breeding, we start in 1862 in a Canterbury whorehouse. Englishmen Samuel Butler (Jonathan Price), apparently a regular customer of Mary Pyke (Fran Olds) wishes to treat his German friend (Michael van Echten).

A generation on it’s 1885 and Shearing shows us the first signs of mechanisation entering the shearing world. Inventor and class-snob Julius Prout (Patrick Hunn) takes workers Bucket (Jonathan Price) and Spade (Barney Olsen) to task for permitting his sister Rebecca (Grace Morgan Riddel) to consort with Sam Pyke (Jared Kirkwood). This scene starts with an ensemble song, but vocalist Laura Robinson struggles to compete with the accompanying musicians and, more problematically, the noise of the company stomping on the floorboards. 

Manufacturing plays in 1917, when the men are away fighting in World War One. Rebecca McMillan nee Prout (Michelle Ny) has suffered an industrial accident and mechanic Brigitta Albrect (Anna Robinson) visits her in hospital. The cause of the accident is gradually revealed and a moving story contrasts with the previous focus on comedy. Hospital Nurse (Fran Olds) and Union Reps (Grace Morgan Riddel and Laura Robinson) all turn on Brigitta for daring to be both of German origin and a female mechanic.

Tailoring (1945) is the only scene to be played outside of New Zealand, being set in the bombed and burned-out remnants of Dresden towards the end of the war. As the middle scene, it also links Pauli from scene one with Manfred from scene seven through the German soldier played by Ingrid Saker. Frankie McMillan (Barney Olsen) is a NZ soldier loose in the Dresden remains and encounters a German soldier, with fellow Kiwi George Potai (Daniel Emms).

After the two war scenes, we return to Masterton for Marketing in 1966. The issue of women’s rights comes to the forefront in this scene, with unwanted pregnancy and the right to contraception as the subject matter. Julia Albright (the anglicised descendents of the Albrechts from Manufacturing), played by Ingrid Saker, is pregnant to Jim Holt – a man she does not want to marry. Sister Bridgey (Anna Robinson) is determined to obtain the new contraceptive pill to avoid this fate and ropes in George McMillan (Jared Kirkwood) to masquerade as her husband in a visit to the nurse (Laura Robinson) and doctor.

Coming forward to 1986 and nuclear testing in the South Pacific is the main topic in Recycling. The Red Hot Theatre Company, comprising of Rubey McMillan (Grace Morgan Riddell), Jules Holt (Michelle Ny) and Claire (Fran Olds). Their decision to perform political theatre in a strip club beggars belief. As if reaching this drunken stag-night audience “who would never hear their message otherwise” is going to change anything! Jules’ handicapped brother (Daniel Emms) arrives with news from home and we get a status update on father Jim Holt – the same Jim Holt from Marketing. 

Finally we come to 22 February 2011 and Unravelling. Alice Holt-McMillan (Ingrid Saker) in Christchurch is conducting a long-term relationship with Manfred (Michael van Echten) in Shanghai, relying on Skype to maintain personal contact. It will be obvious to all, with the day-specific date, that we are building up to the big quake.

Each of the twelve actors has a couple of main roles across the seven scenes, with turns at ensemble roles in-between. It’s a little uneven at times and some of that would appear to be the choice of director Willem Wassenaar.

For example, in Manufacturing, we see an otherwise tender scene played out between Anna Robinson and Michelle Ny undermined by a comic almost caricature-like representation of unionists from Grace Morgan Riddel and Laura Robinson. Given that Laura Robinson goes on to give us a well tuned and subtle performance as the nurse in Marketing, similarly for Riddel in Shearing and Recycling, I can only assume that Wassenaar has, in Manufacturing, chosen to play-off the two opposing styles deliberately – particularly having seen cast one do exactly the same thing.

It’s a minor quibble however and overall the young cast do well. While it is perhaps a little unfair to highlight any actor in particular, for me Daniel Emms’ performance as George in Tailoring and Laura Robinson as Nurse in Marketing are very good.

Having seen both cast one and cast two, I can see that while there are subtle differences and each actor has brought their own aspect to the role, the performances are almost the same. I wonder if it would have been a more interesting experience for the audience to have had separate directors (perhaps Long Cloud regular Sophie Roberts) work with each cast.

Finally, with the forthcoming return of Long Cloud head Willem Wassenaar to Europe I hope that this fine company continues to thrive despite his departure. Wellington theatre, particularly youth theatre, would be poorer for its loss. 
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Legend has it Arthur Meek pitched this idea to Willem Wassenaar over a bowl of curly fries at Sweet Mothers. Now, after two years of devising, writing, workshopping and rehearsing, Sheep’s seven well-wrought scenes, performed by 12 young actors, follow several generations of interlinked families over 149 years. (Next week a second team of 12 will take over the 34 roles.)

Long Cloud Youth Theatre’s characteristic energy and commitment drives the 90-minute show through its dynamic staging. Some excellent acting, with good depth of character and an engaging confidence in ‘being’, which draws us in to their worlds, is contrasted at times by actors belting it out at a level that sometimes gets in the way of the content.

Daniel Williams’ woolshed setting, comprising a corrugated iron back wall with human and sheep-sized portals, and a tongue-in-groove floor adorned with wool-clippings, is ideal, as is Nathan McKendry’s lighting design, featuring standard household ceiling lights. Thomas Press has created another splendid soundscape, opening with a sound of distant sea and bridging scenes with an ambiguous blend of sea, warfare and natural catastrophe.

The epic yet often domestic saga according to Meek begins in a whorehouse, in a scene entitled ‘BREEDING: Christchurch 1862’. Sheep farmer Samuel Butler (Patrick Carroll) – English author of Erehwon or Over the Range* and the most celebrated early occupant of Mesopotamia Station in Canterbury (up the Rangitata Gorge), not that these details are included in the script – takes his German friend Pauli (Sam Phillips) to visit Mary Pyke (Johanna Cosgrove). A robust interrogation of sexual politics and moral imperatives ensues.

It seems Mary and Samuel had a son, Sam Pyke. In ‘SHEARING: Canterbury A&P Show, 1885’, the privileged Julius Prout (Tom Kereama) takes exception to the relationship growing between his sister Rebecca (Frankie Berge) and Sam (Sam Skoog), who wants to be a writer. Julius sees beauty in machines and has acquired (or invented?) a mechanical shearing device. Abetted by Spade (Luke Wilson) and Bucket (Patrick Carroll), to ‘protect’ his sister from marrying ‘beneath her’, Julius challenges a hand-clipper wielding Sam to a shearing race …

‘MANUFACTURING: Kaiapoi Hospital 24 January 1917’ finds Rebecca McMillan, nee Prout (Livvy Nonoa) with – or rather without – a severed hand, thanks to an accident at the woollen mill (machines again*). This allows fear and prejudice to raise their heads when the Acting Chief Engineer, Miss Albright, turns out to be German; real name Brigitta Albrecht (Hannah Wilson). The Nurse (Johanna Cosgrove) is outraged that the company has sent a woman mechanic to fix the machine (despite women having won suffrage in 1893 and there being a war on now). The two Union Reps – Edith (Frankie Berge) and Petulia (Zoe Mahal) – appear to share her anger and all three treat Brigitta as an alien.

In the strongest scene of the seven – ‘TAILORING: Dresden, 15 February 1945’ – Frankie McMillan (Luke Wilson), son of Rebecca and Frank (deceased), of “22 Cantabs”, is hiding out in war-torn Dresden when a young German soldier accosts him, only to be dealt to in turn by another Kiwi, George (Nathan Mudge). The only thing I’ll give away is that the German soldier is Eva (Freya Sadgrove) and – according to the family tree in Bats’ foyer – she is descended from Pauli. As a study of morality, mortality and the degrading obscenity of war, this scene is riveting.

‘MARKETING: Masterton, 1966’ brings us to the Golden Shears, where the proximity of a Nurse (Zoe Mahal) and Doctor prompts fashion designer and model Bridgey Albright (Hannah Wilson), daughter of Brigitta, to prevail on TV guy George McMillan (Sam Skoog), son of Frankie, to pose as her husband so she can get the Pill. Meanwhile her sister Julia (Freya Sadgrove) is pregnant to someone called Jim Holt. The socio-sexual revolution is seen in the context of a world where unintended pregnancy stops women from fulfilling their other dreams – in the Nurse’s case, of going to RADA in London to train as an actress.  

In a bizarre collision of political activism with pragmatism, ‘RECYCLING: Wellington, 1986’ finds the Red Heart Theatre troupe – Ruby McMillan (Frankie Berge), daughter of George, and her lesbian partner Jules Holt (Livvy Nonoa), daughter of Julia and Jim, with Claire (Johanna Cosgrove) – performing in a strip club to get their anti-nuclear testing message through to the stag night jokers who need to be politicised (Luke Wilson, Sam Skoog and Tom Kereama). They make their point with the agit-prop parable of the Pacific island-dwelling frog whose toxic shit contains gold but makes people sick. This night Jules’ physically disabled but very bright brother Gavin (Nathan Mudge) is in the audience. It turns out he has done something … which sits very awkwardly, for me, as a dramatic event. Also at this point, apart from the boozed-up bleating boys, the connection with Sheep has become somewhat elusive.  

The final scene – ‘UNRAVELLING: Christchurch / Shanghai, 22 February 2011’ (note the date) – has Alice Holt-McMillan (Freya Sadgrove) back in the city where her great great great grandmother Mary Pyke (Johanna Cosgrove) began this family line. It’s around lunchtime when Alice is Skyping her German boyfriend Manfred (Sam Phillips) in Shanghai, where he works for the business his grandmother Eva – who was bombed in Dresden – set up, manufacturing woollen goods. She mentions the after-shocks of the first (as we now call it) big earthquake; he wants her to join him … We all know what happens next, and you will have to see the show to discover the outcome for them.

Passed down throughout the generations is a ceramic pendant featuring a Yellow-Eyed Penguin; another dimension of the play’s absorbing journey through a world heavily impacted by human intervention yet still at the mercy of natural forces.  

Sheep is the crowning glory of Willem Wassenaar’s four-year tenure as founding director of Long Cloud Youth Theatre. They have devised work and done classics ancient and modern (click the title above to see the list) and this is the first time they have commissioned a playwright to develop a play for them.

It is a rich and complex work, and may need further tweaking, and some settling of performances, in order for its full value to be shared with the audience. But the fact they have set themselves this challenge attests to the creative spirit with which Wassenaar has imbued this company. He’s moving on soon, to Berlin, but his legacy will remain. Kia ora Willem. Haere ra.  
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*Given Erehwon (1872) includes a chapter called ‘Darwin Among the Machines’, developed from an article Butler contributed to The Press in 1863, I suspect Meek encountered him while researching Collapsing Creation, or maybe vice versa.
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