When Te Radar first appears in the Victorian antiquarian’s study that is the setting for his totally delightful history lesson, he looks like a well-dressed Harpo Marx, with his ginger hair sticking out from under a top hat. In the second half he comes on like a down-at- heel Noel Coward, wearing a dressing gown and holding a huge goblet of red wine.

Like Coward but unlike Marx, he talks and doesn’t stop for two and a bit entertaining hours, and he doesn’t take a blind bit of notice of the study except for the screen above the desk on which a modern lantern show called PowerPoint is projected.

He paces back and forth exhilarated about the stories he has to tell from our country’s little- known history – or, at least, the stories we were never taught at school.

His show is a wonderful melange of stand-up comedy, history lesson, manically funny digressions (pig hunting for a television show), ad libbing and an infectious enthusiasm for life.

You will learn, among many other fascinating stories, all about New Zealand’s first and last submarine, Bob Semple’s tanks and his wheelbarrow handle memorial, New Zealand’s funniest mug shots of a criminal gang, two West Coast uranium miners’ excitement at finding this new gold, and the tale of the Taranaki Highwayman who wasn’t a very good highwayman in the days before Taranaki had highways let alone roads.

I have only one minuscule gripe (why the microphone?), and apart from that all I can do is urge you to see this love letter of a show to the past, present and future of this country.

And what better way is there to show that love than through a great deal of affectionate laughter and the occasional sober appraisal of one or two disasters? 
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Entertaining and accessible portrait of New Zealand culture 

When attending Te Radar’s Eating the Dog at Downstage Theatre last night, I wasn’t sure whether to expect a play, a history lecture, a stand-up comedy act or an entertaining informal talk on New Zealand culture. I could say I got all of these things, but it’s more accurate to say I got something different; something not easily categorised… Unique – and certainly something I’d never seen before.

I saw a truly enthusiastic, vibrant and enlightening portrayal of New Zealand heritage and identity by a highly articulate and charismatic comedian, performer, educator and Kiwi ambassador. I saw audience members on the edge of their seats – not due to carefully measured suspense – but because they seemed to want to physically or discursively engage with what was going on, as the show unfurled like an impressive, aesthetically pleasing and culturally significant fern.

They were seeing something they understood, cared about, and felt part of, and in which they wanted to participate somehow; to locate themselves in Te Radar’s discussion of New Zealand historical and cultural identity, which he addresses through the stories of a dozen or so under-recognised heroic (or anti-heroic) and iconic figures of New Zealand history: Brunner, Maui, Wakefield, Te Rauparaha, Te Rangihaeata, Hone Mokekehu (a.k.a. Hone Mokehakeha), George Wilder, Bob Semple and more. And Te Radar, like a good stand-up comedian, allows for this participation.

Te Radar asks if anyone has ever heard of the uranium rush of 1955. A man responds: “I was given a piece of that uranium, but it was taken off my by the nuns. They caught me using it to read under my bed sheets at night.” Te Radar grabs that piece of uranium and juggles with it. When New Zealand architecture comes up, Te Radar gets an impromptu dig in at the architect of Downstage Theatre, who happens to be in the audience.

Involving another audience member, Te Radar asks what they do for a living. The lady is one of the Image Editors at Te Ara – the Encyclopoedia of New Zealand, around which Te Radar has based his entire show! He clenches up and mumbles something about having ‘liberated’ some imagery from the site, and invites the Te Ara employee for a post-show drink. Brilliant!

This audience interaction epitomises the type of show this is: something very much alive and on the table. Kiwi culture in action. It is a celebration of the awkward and interesting anecdotes of history that make us who we are: “rogues, morons and scoundrels… pooh-poohing the idea of danger.”

The return of Te Radar’s show to Downstage is very appropriate for the Rugby World Cup, as it presents an entertaining and accessible portrait of New Zealand culture, which visitors will surely find illuminating. But it is also an important selection because of the nature of the show: Eating the Dog is intellectually and culturally accessible by all classes of society. It speaks to all kinds of New Zealanders, at a time when the New Zealand theatre industry desperately needs to have a more inclusive, larger audience.

To find out that Downstage has had to make redundancies as recently as last week is very dis-heartening, as the theatre is a vital part of New Zealand culture, and needs the ongoing support and patronage of Wellingtonians: all kinds of Wellingtonians. This is not elitist, exclusivist theatre. A wide range of shows are supported by Downstage, which reflect the diversity of New Zealand society. This kind of quality New Zealand theatre needs and deserves an audience.

Come and see Te Radar’s Eating the Dog at Downstage and don’t let New Zealand theatre get to a point where it has to consider eating the dog. 
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Te Radar has been a fixture in the New Zealand comedy scene for as long as I can remember. He also has proven himself to be a dab hand at personifying an eco warrior on the telly. Tonight however, Te Radar is presenting his Dunedin audience with a selection of tales about New Zealanders “who personify the archetypal ‘She’ll be right’ spirit.”

Walking into the Burns Hall I’m a little unsure of what to expect. As soon as I see I am half the average age of the audience this turns into something a bit more like apprehension. The first few minutes of any comedian’s set are tough. In that time you have to warm up an expectant audience and convince them you are funny and worth the price of the ticket. However, I’m not quite sure if this is going to be a regular comedy set, there’s a projector and what looks to be a PowerPoint presentation all ready to go, maybe this is going to be more like a lecture.

Regardless, a few local references are thrown in – the stadium, Peter Chin – and he drinks from a bottle of Emerson’s Pilsner. This is great fodder for the middle aged crowd and they are lapping it up. Obviously Te Radar knows how to play to his crowd and is doing a great job, but at this stage I am hopping for a little bit more.

A scene is then set: it is a New Zealand forest. A weary English traveller is trekking through the South Island with his dog, two Mâori companions and their wives. They are seeking wide open plains for the New Zealand Company to sell on to new immigrants. But all is not well. Having a diet consisting of mostly fern root, our poor traveller is rather blocked up, he’s tired and there certainly doesn’t seem to be any of these open plains that were promised. His prospects, to quote the man himself, are “fearful” …

In order to fully explain how our traveller got into his current predicament we are taken some 100 years back to the arrival of Captain Cook. It is here that the magic of the show starts to begin. My initial apprehension is soon quashed as I am drawn in by Te Radar’s ability to tell and weave stories together. Now I begin to realise that while this maybe a bit of a history lesson, it’s the version not taught to us in school. Instead it will be the exciting, and hilarious version.

Sometimes it seems that with such a small history, New Zealand doesn’t have much to offer the historical record but Te Radar certainly proved this school of thought wrong. We need not look overseas for stars in history, we have our very own.

We may not have had a Butch Cassidy or Sundance Kid, but we sure had our Taranaki Highway bandit. Whether he made away with any form of money is beside the point. Did New Zealand have a submarine programme? We sure did. Did we build more than one? Certainly not.

New Zealand has a proud history of artists. But what about our sketch artists? In what was possibly the most hilarious moment of the evening we were shown just how strikingly accurate our early sketch artists were.

What links all of the stories together is a sense that in each tale we have a typical Kiwi character who went ahead guns blazing, and came out second best. Te Radar takes what is well known about our history and offers an alternative slant to it. It is evident that a lot of research has gone into the piece, fuelled by a sense of curiosity. It is here that Te Radar is not only clever but inspiring. I certainly am very keen to go out to some of our local museums around the country and see not only what was in the show but discover some hidden gems.

I haven’t gone into great detail about the show as I feel that to do so would take away from the fantastic story-telling technique of Te Radar. The show has to be seen for itself. Needless to say you will certainly learn something in a very entertaining in a unique way.

What is evident from the show as a whole is that the Kiwi spirit has been with us from quite early on in our short [Pakeha] history. Huge thanks must go to Te Radar for bringing this to light for the public to see.
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History lessons at school, or University even, where never as interesting, or as stimulating as the one Te Radar gives in his show Eating the Dog currently playing at Downstage.

But then the snippets of New Zealand history that he selects for his show are not those normally found in a history class. With originality and creativity, Te Radar has researched an amazing array of facts that very few would have ever heard of or known about.

What makes his subject matter the more fascinating is that they are about people in our past who had infamous moments of fame as well as being famous and many of whom applied the Kiwi DIY, No 8-wire mentality to their exploits.

The title of the show is in reference to a little known South Island explorer Thomas Brunner, who had to resort to dog meat for food when one of his explorations went horribly wrong.

This is the first of numerous intriguing and unknown facts about well-known men of our history such as Abel Tasman, the Wakefield brothers, Von Tempsky and Bob Semple – as well as lesser-known ones such as the Burgess Gang of Nelson, the Taranaki Highwayman, and Sir Trevor Chute trying to lead his men around Mt Taranaki.

Then there is the gold-seeking submarine, still in existence apparently in Dunedin, and the astronaut Charles Lorraine flying above Christchurch long before Richard Pearce.

Dressed like some 19th-century explorer, the confidently engaging Te Radar brings much humour and animation to his storytelling giving a modern interpretation to his stories, putting them in the context of today.

His delivery is strong and well paced – it is surprising, therefore, that he has to resort to the use of a microphone in such a small venue.

But that is really the only quibble of a unique and thoroughly entertaining show that traverses many unknown pages of our history.
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Having reviewed its world premiere at Bats in May last year, and knowing it had gone on to play Auckland’s The Basement and Dunedin Fringe (among other places) then return to the SkyCity Theatre earlier this year, I sort of assumed the Downstage season would be different.

Well it is and it isn’t. The substantive content is exactly the same, and I can do no better than to refer you to my earlier review which says everything I would have said this time around.

Performance-wise Te Radar is more relaxed and assured yet still as lively, enthusiastic and discursive as ever, delighting us afresh with his rediscovery of these stories and with injecting topical asides that prove we Kiwis were ever thus. There is more comedian and less ‘mad historian’, perhaps.

Paradoxically this celebration of “the bumblers and ne’er-do-wells who made this country great” is a great achievement that everyone should witness, if only to say to their grand children, “I was there when Te Radar popped the pimple of our self-importance and showed us who we really were.”

Yes, “were”. Yeah right. Just go.

PS: There are also opportunities over the next few weeks – details here – to catch the show in Kaihere, Eketahuna, Pongaroa, Clevedon, Te Tahu and Whangarei. You gotta love this guy. 
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I don’t think it’s giving too much away pointing out that Radar was unable to locate dirt on any historical women whose incompetence came anywhere near enough to the myriad hopeless blokes to warrant inclusion in the work. 

All in all this material is strong enough to warrant an in-depth series (kind of a serious though still hilarious version of Jeremy Wells’ The Unauthorised History of New Zealand). It could also certainly make for an excellent book.
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Te Radar’s penchant for storytelling and some admirable research combine to form a hilarious and off-the-beaten-track history lesson. It’s jam-packed with stories of New Zealand’s entrepreneurial ‘doofusses’ and DIY nutters of the kind you won’t find in a high school history book.

Without exception these enthusiastic adventurers’ ‘she’ll be right’ attitude have got them into serious trouble, much to our comedic benefit. Te Radar’s ebullient PowerPoint-illustrated discourse is peopled with clueless outlaws, a vanished aeronaut, creative property developers, diehard explorers, prison escapees and insights into some of the more ridiculous geographical names, as well as his own experiences of pig hunting and a peppering of commentary on NZ politics and the contemporary media.

There are links to his show ‘Hitori’ on the history of the South Island, but this one covers both Islands. It’s a selective history, of the dubious legacy left to us by some of the nuttier figures that ‘make us who we are today’, most of whom I’d never heard of. The redeeming feature of all his historical characters is that their stupidity/daring has provided us with a great source of entertainment.

This isn’t your usual stand-up routine. The intensely paced monologue, with hardly a pause for breath, doesn’t stop to check if we’re laughing, though he somehow manages to squeeze some funny bone action in there amongst the essential and interesting background notes.

The value of the show is in its fascination factor – it’s an intoxicating selection of bizarre stories, which, after the show was over, left me with a simmering warm feeling of internal laughter at the expense of the unfortunate sods that populate Eating the Dog. It would make a great comic book. 
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The title refers to the pretty pass one may come to when one stuffs up as an explorer. Specifically this happened to Thomas Brunner and party during their early ornithological exploration of the South Island’s West Coast.

Te Radar has burrowed into our history to drag up "the bumblers and the ne’er-do-wells who personify the "She’ll be right" spirit that epitomises this great country." (publicity flyer)

With his characteristic glee at discovering and sharing anything odd, idiosyncratic and questionable about our past histories and present natures, Te Radar plunges us – via PowerPoint – deep into a land richly populated with a wide variety of birds. Then comes Brunner, guided by Epikewaiti and Mokakehu and their wives (spellings as per Brunner’s diary, I think) …

In Te Radar’s view, the eight words penned in Brunner’s diary when things have got about as bad as they could get "sum up what it is to be a New Zealander" (no I won’t reveal them here; you have to see them in context).  They also set the theme for the hour to come.

We leap right back to (not so) Able Tasman then forward to the Wakefields (Edwards Gibbon and Jerningham, and the ill-fated Arthur), with the odd connection made to more recent times, like Te Radar’s descent into the belly of the beast while pig hunting with Glen Osborne. Graphic.

When bad land deals go badder, we learn a salutary lesson from Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata. And naming issues get a good run too: the more things change …

I’d never heard of the Great Uranium Rush of 1955, in and around the Buller Gorge. Nor of The Burgess Gang, the bringing to justice of whom is far too bizarre a tale to have been made up. The Taranaki Highwayman is news to me too – hey, we had it all!

As for Sir Trevor Chute’s attempt to march his 500 men around the mountain (Taranaki) …

The more familiar Bob Semple is a surprise inclusion until we learn about his tanks. Then there is the gold-seeking submarine made by a bunch of Australians called Villain for a Mayor by the name of Fish. All true.  

We’ve all heard of Richard Pearce but what about hot air balloonist Charles Lorraine, pioneer of our extreme sports industry? The story of his demise brings the hour to a poignant ending.

I have but sketched the bare bones here of what is decidedly not a dog. The flesh Te Radar puts on them is witty, perceptive and quite astonishing in multifarious ways. What’s more he reveals hitherto hidden talents in vocal and physical performance, specifically the call of the conch and the dance of indecision.

Highly recommended.
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