THE MERCY CLAUSE
28/06/2014 - 26/07/2014
Production Details
“Ethics and morals and right and wrong – they’re just words. They just mean what you decide they mean.”
There are no easy answers in Centrepoint Theatre’s latest offering The Mercy Clause, opening on Saturday 28 June. An intriguing and compelling psychological drama that won the 2013 ADAM NZ Play Award, The Mercy Clause explores the grey areas of human nature: exposing the potential good in seemingly bad people, and the dark sides that lie hidden under nice facades.
Tom is a lawyer who is about to take on the case of his career. He is poised to defend a young man, Brian, who is accused of killing his own father.
The defence seems straightforward: it was a mercy killing.
But then Tom’s wife, Rachel gets involved, and hears a different story…and suddenly, nothing is as straightforward as right and wrong, guilty or not guilty anymore.
The Mercy Clause is a brand new play (making its world premiere at Centrepoint Theatre!) by Philip Braithwaite. Philip began his playwriting career while he was a student at Massey University; he has gone on to receive several playwriting awards and has also worked as a scriptwriting lecturer at Massey, Victoria, WPAC and Whitereia.
Multi-talented performer Jamie McCaskill returns to Centrepoint following his memorable performance as a prisoner awaiting trial in 2013’s season of Manawa.
Jamie graduated from UCOL Theatre School in 2000. Since graduation he has been performing consistently around the country and internationally. Jamie is also an accomplished musician. Jamie has written 5 plays and his works have received much critical acclaim. His latest play Manawa was nominated for three awards including Best New New Zealand Play, Best Director and Best Actor.
In The Mercy Clause , Jamie gets to explore the other side of the legal system, playing Tom, a lawyer approached to defend a young man on murder charges. Jamie is excited to be getting back on stage – this time in a play he DIDN’T write!
Palmy-raised Liz Kirkman makes a triumphant return to the city to make (astonishingly) her FIRST appearance on the Centrepoint stage, as Rachel. Liz has toured nationally as Rita in Educating Rita with Capital E, as well as touring 2 person versions of King Lear, Macbeth and Othello with Kore Theatre. She has appeared on Shortland St, voiced monsters for Power Rangers and radio dramas for Radio NZ, stumbled down an alley for an ALAC TV commercial and played Detective Kathryn Beattie in internationally acclaimed NZ feature film, Eternity. Her solo show Jezebel of Jazz – Songs and Stories of Anita O’Day was well received at the 2014 National Jazz Festival, and will soon be the final act at the Nelson Winter Festival.
Rounding out the cast as Brian is Wanganui lad Jared Kirkwood, who made his Centrepoint debut last year playing an epic eight different characters in the comedy Shop ‘Til You Drop. Jared – a recent graduate from the New Zealand College of Performing Arts – is also an aspiring filmmaker and avid skateboarder. Now based in Wellington, Jared is happy to be back at Centrepoint and looking forward to flexing his acting muscles, playing a character like Brian who has a bit of a darker side.
Show Times:
The Mercy Clause opens on SATURDAY 28 JUNE and runs until SATURDAY 26 JULY.
Performances runWednesdays at 6:30pm; Thursdays – Saturdays at 8pm; Sundays at 5pm.
Please note there is no Sunday performance on Sunday 29 June.
Special Performance:
$20 Tuesday: Tuesday 1 July, 6:30pm. All tickets for this performance $20. Bookings for this performance only open on Monday 30 June at 9am. Bookings through the box office at 280 Church Street or by phone 354 5740. Tickets are allocated on a first in first served basis and we regret we cannot accept email or answer-phone bookings for this performance. Limit 4 tickets per booking.
Prices: $38 Adults, $30 Seniors, $30 Under 30s,
$28 Community Service Card Holders, $18 Students,
$68 Dinner & Show.
CAST:
Tom: Jamie McCaskill
Rachel: Liz Kirkman
Brian: Jared Kirkwood
DESIGN TEAM:
Set Design: Matt Fannin
Lighting Design: Marcus McShane
Costume Design: Harriet Denby
Endlessly unsettling
Review by John C Ross 29th Jun 2014
A young-ish lawyer, Tom, seriously needs to win a law-case (or at least partly win it), to get his career properly moving along. A client, Brian, admits to having killed his father, and needs defending, with some grounds needing to be found for exoneration. Tom’s wife Rachel needs to have a baby, and her husband earning a decent enough income so he can support them. So, they need each other. True, thus far, yet nowhere near the whole truth.
How they behave, and how the action moves along, are endlessly unsettling. For one thing, all three are for much of the time playing at roles, in the hope of getting what they want. Sometimes the strain of doing so gets too great, and the mask shatters. Brian especially is disingenuous, manipulative, cynical, unpredictable, capable of impulsive low-level violence. Not middle class, he lacks middle class inhibitions. And yet he is not finally beyond sympathy.
The ‘mercy clause’ of the title is not, as one might have assumed, something to do with mercy killing of the terminally ill, in pain, or with other extenuating circumstances to be argued for in a law case. It turns out to be the name Tom and Rachel had chosen for a deal whereby, if either did something really stupid, the other could be appealed to, to forgive him, or her, just that once. Still, to forgive is not to forget. So, how does it apply to the case of Brian?
Without giving too much away, one can say that despite one’s early misgivings, the play works out far more effectively and cleverly than the earlier scenes suggested it might, although some ends are left loose. What future can there be for Tom and Rachel’s marriage?
Jamie McCaskill as Tom, Jared Kirkwood as Brian, and Liz Kirkman as Rachel cope admirably with the complex demands of character and situation. Jeff Kingsford-Brown’s directing works competently.
Still, the set, mainly Tom’s office, otherwise adequate, does involve problems with sight-lines, for the audience at its front right. The schematic stage-left side of the room, and hence of the alignment of the settee, or sofa, would work better if they could be more angled outward, downstage, so that the action taking place on the sofa could be rendered more visible to that sector of the audience. Actors’ movements outside the room would still be visible.
Apart from that, which could surely be remedied, this is a fine production of a very interesting and worthwhile play.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
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