Rachel Dawick’s The Journey of the Boundary Riders, at Palmerston North’s Dark Room, bills itself as a world premier, and in this form – a one-woman show – that is certainly true, although the album which forms its foundation was released to considerable critical acclaim at the end of last year.

The culmination of Dawick’s own four-year voyage of discovery, Boundary Riders explores women’s place in the settling and history of Victorian New Zealand.  Originally she was searching for songs written by female early settlers but when she failed to find those, she found stories and made her own songs from those to tell the adventures of six representative women: a washerwoman, created by merging two actual characters; a tiny gold miner; a notorious prostitute; a travelling entertainer; a misused missionary wife; a famous fraudster. Some stories are quite well recorded, others untold until now. 

The songs vary in genre, depending on the nature of the narrative, and each is entertaining in and of itself. A couple – the story of entertainer Jane Whiteside (AKA Mademoiselle Estella, AKA Blanche Fane, AKA Jennie Anderson) and the tale of prostitute Barbara Welford – are outstanding: pure delight. 

Dawick’s musicality and vocals are excellent, even singing a capella, and she has an engaging presence that makes her personal reflections more confidences than lectures: a very good thing for the overall effect of the show. 

This incarnation of the work is clearly ‘in progress’ – it mixes Dawick’s own narrative of uncovering the histories of the woman with the stories she discovers, and dips into the book that accompanies the two CD album set.  At times this does make the whole feel a little muddled and shifts the focus, further than I personally would like, toward the research and away from the result. 

Given that the double album contains a ‘show CD’ complete with narration, I wonder a couple of times how the piece might work if that, with recorded narration, was placed at the centre of the staging, bracketed at either end with Dawick’s personal commentary.  This might allow for the presence of both elements in both halves of the show while placing the Boundary Riders themselvesin a complete uninterrupted narrative as the core of the evening.

That speculation aside, though, The Journey of the Boundary Riders is an interesting and rewarding evening’s entertainment, and Dawick’s accomplished musical performance in particular is highly enjoyable and well worth your time and attention (though I would strongly suggest not using the album as entry and interval music, since this takes some surprise away from hearing the songs in situ, as it were). 

The Journey of the Boundary Riders will perform at the Old Colonial Cottage in Nairn Street, Wellington on 22 and 23 April, before Dawick travels to the UK to tour the stories and find out more details about her characters at the end of next week.

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