The Outing is a musical show or, as the programme has it, ‘an original musical tour de force’ about a group of gay and lesbian people travelling on a bus (shades of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) from Newtown to Civic Square for a dance party.

It takes a long time to travel such a short distance because the bus keeps stopping to pick up every gay and lesbian cliché, joke, and stereotype on the way. It’s as if nothing has changed – in the theatre at least – since the 1970s when gay concerns were first heard on our stages.

The problem of work devised by and written for a coterie is that the performers don’t have to work hard to get an appreciative reaction as the corny jokes (Kiwi fruit), the juvenile sexual innuendo, and the inevitable scenes of violence and homophobia are trotted out yet again.

The cast of 25 performers, supported by a live band Vorn, has obviously worked extremely hard with the dance routines and the numerous songs though with varying degrees of success. The drag queens were, for drag queens, rather drab, while the kapahaka group Tiwhanawhana brought some style and professional polish to the proceedings and it’s a real pity it appeared only once.

The brightest spot in the whole show was, not surprisingly, the party in Civic Square in which the whole cast appeared wearing enormous hats – they really were fabulous.
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Silly me. Having got wind of The Outing, billed as "an original musical tour-de-force", I investigated further and was assured it was a professional production and yes, they would like a review. Well Red Boots Productions may well make quality corporate and training videos but this venture into live performance is decidedly tacky in both content and presentation.

I almost cried off reviewing it at all until I saw the ticket prices: $35 with a student concession of $20 (Sat 5pm show only) and a Corporate / VIP ticket price of $60 (which includes goodie bags, nibbles, glass of bubbles, pre show entertainment and admission to "front of house seats"). That plus the 25 sponsors and funders listed make them way more accountable than amateur groups.

Even though it’s unlikely the 30+ cast members, 6 musicians, 5 choreographers, 40+ production crew will be paid for the 4-show season, that’s no excuse for shoddy work in what is either under-rehearsed or involves too many less-than-adequate performers. The sound quality on opening night was woeful more often than not (did they do a proper sound check?) and an attempt to project city-scape images over the action simply created a visual mess.

"Original", by the way, does not mean original songs. The musical content includes ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ (from The Wizard of Oz), ‘What a Wonderful World’, ‘Downtown’, ‘I Feel Pretty’ (from West Side Story), ‘Who Let The Dogs Out?’, a kapa haka group singing ‘Tihei Mauriora’, ‘Lovestruck Romeo’, ‘Bus Stop’, ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman’, ‘I Kissed a Girl’, ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him’ (from Godspell), the Andrews Sisters’ ‘Candyman’ (a reworking of ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy’), something involving Bisexual Lipstick, ‘They Had It Coming’ (from Chicago), ‘When a Blind Man Cries’ and ‘Everybody’s Free’.

This rather random concert is clumsily fashioned into the semblance of a cliché-ridden story – devised by the cast – involving a cross-section of the gay community who variously make their ways via a rainbow-festooned bus, a street fair and the city in general to a Gay Icon party in Civic Square.

All the tired old gay double entendres and dildo props get an outing, eliciting shrieks of laughter from about three people (although I did smile at a well-delivered "cunnilingus: that’s a bit of a mouthful"). For dramatic conflict we get a bit of unrequited love and a heavy dose of clichéd homophobia, bringing the longer first section to a downbeat close.

In the shorter second section we learn, inevitably, that gay pride will not be vanquished – either that or they won’t let a bashing get in the way of a good party – and the show culminates in a spectacular parade of headwear honouring architectural and other visual icons of Wellington.

The drag queens have style, the kapa haka group is polished and the band does well but it’s slim pickings among the rest. A couple of interesting relationships develop in the odd scenes that are oases of coherence in the creatively barren landscape.  About three performers are consistently good and a few others have their moments amid a clunky collage of theatrical ineptitude that suggests anyone who wanted to be in it was allowed because hey, this is about inclusiveness.

Maybe the gay community is happy to pay those prices just to be a supportive part of the scene. But why should they – let alone their sponsors and any other potential audience member – have to accept such low standards in a city so full of genuine talent?
  

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