As a ‘curtain raiser’ – or should I say ‘prefix’ – to this year’s NZ Fringe Festival, the Wellington Young Actors offer an assorted and intriguing mix of five scenarios under the collective title The Anti – which is extensively defined on the production page.  

Originally planned for June last year (after their Puberty: the Musical just made it through Fringe 2020), it was Covid-postponed. Re-writes, re-casting and fresh new elements have ensued to create this Fringe season.

The sight of three blindfolded teenaged boys sitting on the floor back-to-back, shoulder-to-shoulder, bound together by the arms, hooks us in as we take our physically-distanced seats in BATS’ ground floor Stage space.

The title, ‘Buds’, initially suggests mates then turns out to refer to a substance that is illicit when possessed for supply. An escapade involving a phone and a second storey window has got them into serious trouble. Billy and Jack are brothers with status issues. I don’t catch the name of the third, who is facing upstage throughout. There is no doubt their situation is serious and recriminations are tangling with their ideas about how to get out of there.

At this point I have to say the tricky acoustics of this bare black box space are not kind to some voices while others are perfectly pitched. Speaking fast and without projection (not shouting, just carrying the voice on your breath) renders too many words indistinct so I know there is more to each of the five dialogue-rich scenes than I’m comprehending which is very frustrating. When actors are fully invested in their roles, as these 18 actors are, the audience wants buy-in too – that’s what we’re here for.

‘Unfit’ finds a bewildered girl in a hospital gown amid a constant flurry of nurses and doctors. She may or may not have had her appendix out and her bored book-reading mother is unsympathetic and disassociated. We are left to interpret where truth lies and whether this is a subjective or objective reality. Who or what is ‘unfit’?

Apart from the laptop a busy man works at, the characters and props are summed up in the next scene’s title: ‘A Man, a Cleaner and a Bag’. The Man simply wants the bag removed. The Cleaner seems incompetent at first. The contents of the bag provoke our conjecture. Our perceptions of the characters change … Again, what’s real and what’s fiction is the puzzle we’re set to solve.

The self-image, romantic hopes, actual expectations, fantasies and forebodings of young women are cyclically expressed in ‘Hitch’. Romeo gets a mention, there’s something bizarre about a borrowed body, life-long partnerships are acknowledged as the ideal and tips on how to be the perfect housewife are resuscitated from the 1940s. It was ever thus for young women facing adulthood (alongside other vocational prospects).

At the other end of the working life spectrum, one man – Norman Barry Hanks – sees his endeavours as amounting to nothing but ‘Trash’, which is made manifest on the table he slumps beside. A young woman, Jane, does her best to convince him it’s all been worthwhile and his achievements should be celebrated. Dramatised flashbacks offer glimpses of a remarkable life and the choices he’s made, with pertinent references to the street artist Banksy and the self-exiled Duke of Sussex. There’s a surprise twist when he reveals his biggest mistake.  

I can tell the creative processes that have gone into developing The Anti have been of great value to the participants. And it’s clear there is much more to the scenarios than has met my ears and stimulated my interest beyond just trying to decipher some words. Hopefully the cast will get the pitch of the space as the season progresses – and will perform in the knowledge that although they are very familiar with the material, their audience is seeing and hearing it for the very first time.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer