This is an excellent premise for a sketch show. Anyone stuck in overcrowded departure lounges, especially when flights are delayed, will have suffered privilege envy on realising there is an exclusive enclave called the Koru Club from which they are excluded. What comforts are they being lavished with while we mere mortals suffer the baggage and odours of the great unwashed?

Created, written and directed by Neon Fruit, a group of people who usually improvise, The Koru Hour is strong in some parts and weak in others. I can see how funny many bits would have been for them when they spontaneously erupted in rehearsal; they delight clusters of friends in the audience too. But un-related audience members come with a different perspective when a show is billed as written, rehearsed and directed. 

Maybe offering a bit more context would make the pre-recorded ‘Conversations that Happened’ funnier. In the sketch where Lounge hostess Brie (Hannah Bennett) has to deny access to narcissistic selfie-stick toting ‘how to be elite’ motivator Deloitte Fletcher (Tim Croft), because his membership has expired, Bennett nails the beautifully crafted phrasing of her determined resistance but Croft’s erratic, un-grounded characterisation throws the sketch’s focus and timing way off.  

We get a ‘Safety Briefing’ from Brie and Viv (Mary Little), accompanied by Ed Sheeran (Matt Hutton) on ukulele, where challenges to our privilege and Fonterra’s bottom line are addressed. In what becomes a running gag, Little’s Chief Lounge Liaison, Viv, is increasingly traumatised by her ‘Coffee Gaveyard’.

Hutton also delivers an astutely observed ‘Unaccompanied Minor’ called Brooklyn, who is wilfully abandoned by his fashion-conscious mother, Olivia (Virgina O’Connor). O’Connor brings strong physical commitment to performing manic Lounge chef, DJ Seretonicity: a driven character in search of a well-crafted sketch.

The waiting-in-the-Lounge sketch where a Judge (Bennett) attempts to dictate a determination while afflicted with ‘scream sneezes’ is a strangely marooned idea. And why the false moustache? A judge can be a woman.

Other sketches are called ‘Deloitte Elite P1 Quest’, ‘Staff Training’, ‘Predator v Predator’, ‘The Barricade’ and ‘Buffet Battle’. Good ideas abound and snippets of performance delight but too often poor scene structure, lack of focus and bad timing subvert the potential. Perhaps much more rehearsal, some dramaturgical rigour and a strong directorial eye would bring The Koru Hour up to standard. 

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