A great production starts with an excellent script and Gary Henderson’s Skin Tight is one that is meant to be performed. Director Katherine McRae and her cast and crew do spectacular justice to the script, giving us a hearty, tender, playful and powerful performance.

Skin Tight is inspired by Henderson’s own parents and Denis Glover’s poem The Magpies. We follow Tom (Arlo Gibson) and Elizabeth (Ella Gilbert) as they revisit past experiences and explore dark secrets, all with immense love. Gibson and Gilbert completely capture our attention for the full 65 minutes of the performance. [More]

Note: The end of the DomPost review may contain spoilers for those who’d prefer to discover things themselves. – Ed
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A well-deserved standing ovation greets this new Katherine McRae-directed production of Gary Henderson’s Skin Tight,* featuring Arlo Gibson and Ella Gilbert as Tom and Elizabeth – named for the couple who “took the farm” in Denis Glover’s poem, The Magpies and also inspired by Henderson’s family history in rural Canterbury.

The play, like the six-stanza poem, is an epic distillation of a decades-long relationship. As an intensely subjective memory play, it offers its audience a gripping fantasy vs reality conundrum to be solved within its 65 minutes. The initial spoken line, “I have to go,” alerts us to the first of many questions that engage us in our intuitive quest for answers.

For some the ‘reality’ may slowly dawn, for others the final image, personified by K.C. Kelly, will be the ‘get it’ moment. Those who already know the play will thoroughly enjoy noting the clues that bring the totality into clarifying perspective. Some first-timers may wish to go again to get that benefit too.

In a post-show discussion with friends, we concluded its ‘now’ is the early 1960s while Elizabeth and Tom appear in memory as the fit young adults they have felt themselves to be throughout a relationship that began in the 1920s at school and survived well beyond their enforced separation during WWII.

Ella Gilbert’s Elizabeth and Arlo Gibson’s Tom give each other no quarter in the stylised physical fighting that opens the play and punctuates it throughout. The thrills they clearly give each other quickly allay any fear that we’re condemned to witness a domestic violence story. Their actions are magnified manifestations of the full spectrum of deep-felt passions they have experienced in the face of a range of domestic and global challenges.

As their relationship plays out in all its visceral and volatile glory, the recalled scenarios are superbly orchestrated and modulated – although vocal over-projection in some sequences on opening night could be reconsidered.

Small details – like Elizabeth’s aroma in their first intimate encounter – are seeded early to bloom later with dramatic impacts that resonate well beyond the confines of this relationship. Unlike many post-war marriages, this one has benefitted from Tom sharing what happened to him, but Elizabeth still has a secret to reveal before she goes. And one family element remains sadly unresolved.

The skeletal farmhouse set, designed by Lucas Neal, features a large tin bath and assorted buckets, bowls and pans. This stands as a ghostly backdrop to most of the action which takes place on the judo mat-laden forestage, until the bath is utilised. Brynne Tasker-Poland’s lighting design, Ben Kelly’s sound design and Oliver Devlin’s music – impeccably operated by Niamh Campbell-Ward – conspire to bring often surprising texture to the production.

Movement director Luke Hanna, with fight expert Allan Henry, and intimacy co-ordinator Tandi Wright have also worked with director Katherine McRae and the extremely active cast to ensure this Skin Tight production is enthralling to witness and enriching to ponder.
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*First directed by Gary Henderson with Jed Brophy and Larissa Matheson as Tom and Elizabeth, Skin Tight premiered at BATS Theatre in 1994, was revived at Downstage Theatre for two seasons in 1996, travelled in 1997 to festivals in Hastings, Taranaki and Christchurch, then played the Traverse Theatre at the 1998 Edinburgh Fringe, winning a Fringe First before going on to London.
In 2004, a new production, directed by Miranda Harcourt with Brophy and Danielle Cormack as Tom and Elizabeth, opened at Downstage then toured to Napier, Hamilton, New Plymouth, Palmerston North, Nelson and Auckland.

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