A kind of road play, this has four late-teens blokes driving north to witness the sunrise at Cape Te Reinga, with its episodes made up of their interactions and other experiences along the way, together with progressive disclosure of their individual natures and life-issues. These issues get serious enough to move it into drama rather than comedy.

According to the press-release, it is set back in 1994, which matters in terms of costume-design and background music.

Overall, this is a genuinely good play, well-produced and well-acted. If, on the first night, I found the first few episodes rather incoherent and scrambly, let’s hope they will work better as the production settles in.

Perhaps, for audience-members, in a realm mainly of show-not-tell, getting the characters into focus, and discovering how to interpret their verbal exchanges, are bound to take time. Still, having the rhythms functioning better will help.

How much should a reviewer tell?

Eb (Nic Sampson) is over-active, hence drivenly pro-active, even when this means making things turn to custard, and attacking his mates. Jardyn (Ashley Hawkes) has sexual identity issues. Mo (Jack Sergent-Shadbolt) has illness issues. Arthur, a young Maori (Mauri-Oho Stokes), more reticent than the others, needs only a few profitable drug-deals to be able to afford to go legit, but they’re not easy to pull off.

Things are not made easy for the others either, and worst for Mo. Plumb’s characters are well-differentiated, and their degrees of articulateness are plausible without becoming tediously restricted. Variations on the f-word abound. When Mo needs to be given a heightened level of articulateness, he pulls out a little book to quote from.

Determined to be under-impressed by anything, they are indeed impressed by their experiences of the Cape, and their troubled bondings are partly restored by these experiences, about which each speaks in his own way, perhaps to himself, and us.

Emily O’Hara’s set very cleverly serves the shifting along of locality, with cool-grey crossways panels slid in grooves instage or outstage, five easily movable boxes serving as seats in the car, or whatever else is needed, and a few stylised detail-features. 

It’s an always-live play, recognisably exploring a certain stage in these young men’s lives, and well worth seeing. 
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