Sliding Doors takes its title and central device from a 1989 movie. This told two different versions of one life, as experienced by a woman who misses a train in one story line, and catches that train in another.

Nelson-based director Nikkie Karki introduces the premise at the start of the show, suggesting there are pivotal times in our lives when a trivial event or a decision quickly made might change everything.  

The performers then each quickly sketch a character and present them to the audience. We are tasked with choosing whose life story will be told tonight, in two alternating versions. The characters offered are an accountant, a cook, an architect, an artist, and an alien commander ready to take over the world.

The audience chooses to follow the ambitious and hopeful restaurant owner and cook (Amy Crawford). The other players quickly adapt their characters to fit her story. 

The world-dominating alien (Jaklene Vukasinovic) is nimbly justified as the game-name of a wealthy sci-fi convention organiser with the potential to bring buckets of customers.  The accountant (Ben Keane) is also the cook’s brother and provides the decision moment where the story splits into two, counselling caution in investing and expanding the restaurant.  In one version, the cook cuts back her spending, upsetting the dreams of her then partner, the architect (Lance Driver) who leaves her.  In the other the business expands, but at the expense of her neglected relationship with the architect. 

It is oddly enjoyable when the characters get to the same result by different routes, hinting that perhaps some things in a life are inevitable. 

As with all good improv, it is all about the relationships. We only learn the barest details of the common history to both stories, but it is enough.  The cast seamlessly switch from one version to the other, each scene seeming to end just when it should. The story lines are satisfying and both present plausible yet unexpected outcomes from that initial ‘sliding door’ moment. 

There is a deliciously shocking twist near the end: the central character is murdered in one version and in the other ends up in a romance with the same really very bad man (Lyndon Hood). 

Audience members are overheard talking about this twist afterwards in the BATS bar, speculating on the chances of the surviving version of the cook living happily for long; “He still stole her money, she just doesn’t know it yet.”

The five performers, from different Australian and New Zealand Troupes, are bought together for the first time in a workshop led by Karki only the day before, and their teamwork is impressive.  In a festival week featuring so many different styles of performance, this show is classic dramatic storytelling.

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