Each generation of young adults, it seems, needs to put away childish things by laying the ghosts of what once held them in unquestioning thrall. How better to do it that through send-up comedies that expose the hypocrisies behind the once innocently-trusted facades.  

In last year’s Wellington Fringe, for example, Who’s Neat? You! lampooned the happy upbeat Theatre in Education genre, pitting the ‘you can do anything’ message against the performers’ exclusion of a colleague desperate for ‘ stardom’.

Skoolnite is a brand new chat show on youth channel MeTV, replete with a host in a skewed baseball cap that shows how kool at skool he is. Staged with no budget in the tiny Pit Bar at Bats, a Justin Beaver poster is the sole indicator of their target audience.

As we gather the host warms up by pacing about and saying “Begin,” which I’m thinking is not his decision in a TV studio, then I realise he is pumping himself up by repeating his own name: “Beegan.” Paul Waggott pitches the try-hard ‘youthfulness’ of Ken Beegan in a performance the character himself could only describe as “Awesome.” Seriously, he knows no other adjective.  

Beegan’s first star guest, to launch the show, is none other than former Medicine Street soap opera star and now recording artiste Richie Richardson, also well-pitched by Jonny Potts in a ‘youth role model’ persona carefully cultivated to hide (but not quite) his self-interest, sleaze and addictive personality.

Operating from the back of the room (behind the bar), is the floor manager Kate Clarkin, whose role is underdeveloped. Better research on TV studio protocols could lead them to get dramatic value from her being the one who passes on orders and messages from the unseen / unheard control room (often having to sanitise them to maintain morale on the floor). Combine that with her being supposed to suppress her own opinions and value systems and you have something more than a cipher to work with.

Rather than have it known that Richie Richardson is facing a statutory rape charge, why not have him be the ‘well known actor’ whose name has been suppressed, except the floor manager knows it’s him. But what the unseen ‘powers the be’ upstairs want – and/or Ken, maybe, if he has executive producer status – is controversy and scandal, to put them on the ratings map (cf the Paul Holmes launch with Dennis Connor – I know, I’m showing my age here). There is real potential for a ‘who is using whom, and to what ends?’ scenario here.  

Simple things like the proper live-to-air countdown (“5, 4, 3, -, ->”), the floor-manager joining the ‘talent’ in the commercial breaks (and even, in a low-budget show, being obliged to powder them down) would open up good dramatic and comedic opportunities. And some lights coming up when they are on air, and down when they’re not, should be a given too.

There are many excellent authentic touches, like the pushing of the “don’t smoke” message, the public confessing and cleansing of a drug-addiction phase, and the prize giveaways (although it just looks wrong for Ken to be reading the winners’ names from cue cards he has been holding all night, rather than from new cards delivered by the Floor Manager.

Once more a devised work has fallen short of it potential. Need I point out (again) that writers and directors do have their uses? I’m assuming this is a tryout season, hence the detailed feedback for a good show that could be excellent.

With more work at the concept and script development levels, Skoolnite could become a potent satire, redolent of the Australian TV show Frontline (oops, done it again) and (more recently) the Bats/Stab show Live at Six.

It could even recur as a live theatre serial. I hope it does.
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