Who killed seven year old Charlie? He choked on a Lego-man’s body. Who aided and abetted? Was it Barbie? Snake Eyes action figure? Teddy? Jack-n-the-Box?

Dan Musgrove and Natalie Medlock have penned another deliciously OTT script for 30 actors to rip into for a yuletide Bats fundraiser. Eight roles shared out among varying combinations of actors each night. No night is remotely the same and I warrant there is a healthy dose of ad lib as well.

The script takes the form of eight separate monologues with only a little interaction between characters – this is a practical consideration to limit rehearsal time when so many are sharing roles. The lack of rehearsal is both a strength and weakness with some of the funniest situations coming from ‘the-seat-of-your-pants’ acting school. Most of the time the risks were rewarded with raucous laughter from the audience but ‘corpsing’ on stage is a no-no in any theatre. It happened twice the night I went.

Despite this – I can honestly say I haven’t laughed so hard since the last time I experienced the Musgrove/Medlock script which was last year’s Bats fundraiser. 
It is mean to highlight individual performances as it is pot-luck each night as to who you might get, but I will anyway.

Erin Banks’s ‘Ball’ was innocent, effervescent and utterly adorable. Chris Parker’s ‘Viewmaster’ was imbued with nerdy chic and delivered in a brilliant nasalised drawl, and Natalie Medlocks ‘Jack-n-the-Box was the most potty mouthed, rancorous, nasty toy in the toy box.- fantastic. Wouldn’t you be just a tad psychopathic if locked inside a box most of your life?

‘Toys’ is R rated and hilarious.

If for no other reason – go to see where the Michael Jackson figurines ‘Char-mone’ button is located. rX
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n����s of actors each night. No night is remotely the same and I warrant there is a healthy dose of ad lib as well. 
The script takes the form of eight separate monologues with only a little interaction between characters – this is a practical consideration to limit rehearsal time when so many are sharing roles. The lack of rehearsal is both a strength and weakness with some of the funniest situations coming from ‘the-seat-of-your-pants’ acting school. Most of the time the risks were rewarded with raucous laughter from the audience but ‘corpsing’ on stage is a no-no in any theatre. It happened twice the night I went. 
Despite this – I can honestly say I haven’t laughed so hard since the last time I experienced the Musgrove/Medlock script which was last year’s Bats fundraiser. 
It is mean to highlight individual performances as it is pot-luck each night as to who you might get, but I will anyway. Erin Banks’s ‘Ball’ was innocent, effervescent and utterly adorable. Chris Parker’s ‘Viewmaster’ was imbued with nerdy chic and delivered in a brilliant nasalised drawl, and Natalie Medlocks ‘Jack-n-the-Box was the most potty mouthed, rancorous, nasty toy in the toy box.- fantastic. Wouldn’t you be just a tad psychopathic if locked inside a box most of your life? 
‘Toys’ is R rated and hilarious. 
If for no other reason – go to see where the Michael Jackson figurines ‘Char-mone’ button is located.

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On a second viewing Toys seems much more coherent – a function of three factors: my prior knowledge; actors more settled into their roles (at the 9pm show last night I don’t think anyone was up for the first time); a more attentive audience (i.e. not a hugely upbeat opening night audience more into perFORMance than content).

The script, by Natalie Medlock and Dan Musgrove, is ingenious, well constructed in ‘who-dunnit’ mode, insightfully witty and surprising poignant in parts. There is even a subtextual message about the way children treat their toys. All this gives the wide variety of actors – cohesively directed by Sophie Roberts – lots to work with as they add their special bit of flair, which they do with alacrity.

Seeing different actors in the roles (well, 7 out of 8 for me) also adds interest and texture. Comparisons are not the point; everyone’s take is valid, and what is especially splendid is that despite the brief randomness of the gig, everyone I have seen has been very well prepared, working well beyond trying to remember their lines. True pros, the lot of them.

Eschewing Ball’s Taiwanese heritage, Kate McGill opts for a soft Irish accent which beautifully serves her existential bemusement at a ball’s capacity to die and come back to life again many times over.

Eli Kent’s ViewMaster is brittle and precise, a sort of Kiwi John Cleese with a tendency to Tourette’s.

Allan Henry (the only actor I’ve seen twice in the role) has cut back on some of his brilliant auditorium-climbing antics in order, presumably, to explore more deeply the emotional and sexual frustrations of Snake Eyes. He also speaks from the heart as his (Kiwi) self while reserving the American accent for his posturing persona. Excellent.

Following through on the premise that when Kiwi kids give voices to their toys, in play, they mostly given them Kiwi voices, Daniel Williams’ drag queen Barbie gets a whole new dimension. Better known to us as a designer, Williams does perform in drag and her s/he uses the well (over)wrought persona as a vehicle for conveying the iconic beauty’s mindless bitchiness with great authenticity.

Heather O’Carroll draws us in to Share-A-Smile Becky’s also-ran life by authentically representing all Kiwi girls who feel inadequate by comparison with Barbie, yet love her obsessively, whether or not they – like Becky – are confined to a wheelchair. As a double-act, O’Carroll and Williams work together wonderfully.

After interval Jack springs from her box in the shape of Ally Garrett whose villainously smiling clarity of voice adds crucial depth to our understanding of her embitterment, and of the ever-twisting murder mystery. Instead to the poo gag she opts for a miscellany of booze bottles to represent her three years of incarceration.

Jane Waddell brings very genteel English air to her skinny Teddy, which makes her malevolence all the more dramatic.

And so to the final gathering ostensibly presided over by ViewMaster until the Michael Jackson figurine eclipses all with his star power. Martyn Wood’s impersonation is spot on (apart from the moon walking) and his singing is superb.

Last night’s 9pm audience got a bonus in Williams’ Barbie offering a tribute to Wellington’s iconic drag queen, Carmen with Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You.’  Very appropriate.

If you’ve seen Toys before, it’s well worth a second visit – and if you haven’t seen it at all, there’s just 2 more shows tonight.
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Make no mistake about it Toys is a panto-revue for adults, even though the eight characters are all toys belonging to Charlie who has been carried off into the night on Christmas Eve in mysterious circumstances. In a crazy sort of Agatha Christie finale, where all the toys are assembled at Barbie’s dream mansion, you may discover who the culprit is.

Is it Ball who bounces everywhere with an irrepressible smile except when he’s deflated? Is it the “whole-lot-of-fun and educational” but outdated Viewmaster with dubious photos of his secret passion, Kevin Bacon? Is it the stiff-jointed Barbie or her friend Share-a-Smile Becky? Could it be the macho Snake Eyes or the sado-masochistic, foul-mouthed Jack-in-the-box? It surely couldn’t be the cigarette smoking but cuddly Teddy or the moon-walking Michael Jackson doll?

Toys, like all pantos, has some audience participation (be prepared to blow hard and kiss and hug Teddy), and like all revues it is made up of sketches giving each performer a chance to shine and make us laugh. Each night, like last year’s Christ Almighty!, there are different actors performing the roles.

At the second performance Leon Wadham was Ball, Simon Haren Viewmaster, Ricky Dey Snake Eyes, Jessica Robinson Barbie, Hariette Cowan Becky, Natalie Medlock Jack, Anya Tate-Manning Teddy, and Dan Musgrove Michael Jackson. Other nights you may see the likes of Nick Dunbar, Ginette McDonald, Heather O’Carroll,Erin Banks, Eli Kent and Martyn Wood.

Though the Jack-in-the-box sketch needs shortening and Jessica Robinson’s brilliantly made-up and costumed Barbie speaks with an English accent – Barbie is as American as apple pie – the show speeds along its cheeky, irreverent and ribald way with all  the energy and fun of an end-of-year party.

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Toys is the Bats Theatre Christmas fundraiser, written by Dan Musgrove and Natalie Medlock.  It follows a similar formula to last year’s Christ Almighty.  Multiple actors learn each part and perform them on different nights in different combinations, with very little rehearsal together.  The result is haphazard, but hilarious.

The show is set on a lurid pink set, littered with oversize Christmas presents. The show commences with flashing red and blue lights.  We learn from the ridiculously charming, but slightly dim Ball (Leon Wadham) that they are the lights of the ambulance that have taken his owner Charlie away.  Charlie has died, possibly at the hands of one of his own toys.  Ball doesn’t understand this as he has a pure and simple love for Charlie. 

Ball is a successful warm up act that gets to cheekily bounce around the theatre and interact with the audience.  Wadham seemed to revel in this role, fully inhabiting the character of Ball. 

Ball is followed by the tightly-wound Viewmaster (Eli Kent).  A “classic” toy, Viewmaster sneers at modern toys, especially X-Box.  Viewmaster has called a meeting of the toys in Barbie’s dream house to find out who murdered Charlie.  Kent portrays Viewmaster as a didactic, manic control freak, with only a tenuous grip on his sanity (not to mention his passion for Kevin Bacon).  He knows, however, what happens to toys that no longer have a child to play with them – they are consigned to the scrap-heap.  Kent’s finely observed performance had the audience in stitches.   

Hadleigh Walker plays Snake Eyes, a GI Joe soldier figurine as a shell shocked hard man.  He witnessed the murder, but doesn’t remember the details. Shedding light on the frustrations of an adult toy’s life (including sex without genitalia), Snake-Eyes’ monologue introduces a more sombre tone.  He is mourning his dead best friend, Yorick, a Lego man of whom all that remains is a head.  Yorick’s suicide mission may have caused Charlie’s death, but Snake-Eyes is convinced someone put him up to it.   

A larger than life ‘nude’ Barbie explodes onto the stage next.  Daniel Williams plays Barbie as all hair, boobs, sparkly makeup, giant high heels and histrionics.  Yet under the surface is a canny operator – she too knows the fate of an un-needed toy is a trip to the dump. 

Barbie is joined on stage by Share-a-Smile Becky, a wheelchair bound doll discontinued by Mattel.  As her wheelchair doesn’t fit into Barbie’s dream house, she lives in her driveway.  Heather O’Carroll does a good job with one of the less funny characters in the show, but she was often upstaged by Williams.  As the first scene to depart from the monologue format of the show, this scene demonstrates some of the pitfalls of limited rehearsal time.  As Barbie and Becky’s love blossoms and they plan their escape, Ball returns to announce half time.

The dark and whacky Beetlejuice theme music heralds the second half and up pops Jack in the Box.  Paul Harrop’s performance and appearance as Jack was amazing.  My eyes were wide the entire time as his character lurched wildly between charming and psychopathic.  Trapped in his box for three years by Paul Jenning’s books after a past attempt to kill Charlie, Jack’s crazy and homicidal influence has worked on someone, but he doesn’t know who.  All he knows is that he or she spoke Taiwanese.  This instantly casts suspicion on the lovely Ball, who earlier has proudly pointed out that he is made in Taiwan.  Harrop’s performance was an absolute highlight for me.  

Jack is forced back into his box by Teddy, the matriarch of the group at over 120 years old.  Despite being the agony aunt for all the other toys, Teddy feels nothing and has little love for Charlie, who has cast her aside for newer, cooler playthings.  Jane Waddell looks adorable as Teddy, but plays her with detached, world weary contempt.  

All of the toys come back on stage, and the murder mystery is solved with remarkable ease. As the toys embark on violent retribution against the killer of their owner, a Michael Jackson figurine rises from the dead (batteries that is) to preach peace and love.  Darlene Mohekey could have a successful side career as an MJ impersonator.  It’s a bizarre ending to a strange play.   

Toys is great fun and quirky.  It’s perfect adult fare for this time of year.  The monologue format is successful, and despite the lack of rehearsal there’s was only the occasional need to call for a prompt.  The profits go back to Bats Theatre, and I’d urge everyone to see it more than once. 

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Despite the jolly fat man who graced the Bats foyer on opening night, Chico Marx’s Fiorello (in A Night at the Opera) was right: “There ain’t no Sanity Clause.” These Toys are crazy!

And can we blame them?  They’ve just lost Charlie (aged 6). Was it an accident or was it murder? If the latter, who dunnit and why? But it’s not only the insidious cloud of suspicion that is freaking them out. As Barbie reminds us in a rare moment of perception: “What happens to toys that don’t have owners?” It is only thanks the Charlie that she wasn’t sent to the dump long ago (presumably Charlie has, or had, a big sister).

Toys, which premiered this time last year at The Basement in Auckland, is the latest offering from Natalie Medlock and Dan Musgrove, who not only wrote last year’s Bats Christmas hit Christ Almighty! but also brought us Blinkers and Spurs (2008), A Song for the Ugly Kids (2009), The Giant Face (2010) and Dan is Dead, I Am A Yeti (written with Thomas Sainsbury, in this year’s Comedy Festival). Offbeat, oddball humour is therefore to be expected and welcomed.

Throughout the season the eight roles will be drawn from a pool of 31 actors (click the show title above for the full list), but you’ll have to friend them on Facebook or Twitter or something, to find out when each will be on. Director Sophie Roberts has rehearsed each actor for two or three hours each and every night’s combination of performers is as fresh for them as for the audience.

Daniel Williams’ set is a colourful array of block, boxes and massive books, which puts the action to come into perspective as well as context.

Ball is full of inner bounce and “the happiest ball in the world” despite the circumstances and an accident-prone history that has subjected it to multiple punctures and patches. Made in Taiwan – with an accent to match – and brought to Charlie in Santa’s big ball sack, Bryony Skillington’s Ball is an infectiously upbeat warm-up act. Rambunctious.  

The lugubriousness of ViewMaster is a dramatic contrast. As an educational toy who feels undervalued and forgotten, he has developed a Kevin Bacon fetish – played out with relish by Chris Parker. But he takes no responsibility for what gets slotted into him … (warning: adult content). Delightfully idiosyncratic.

Despite being “dangerous, mysterious and mute” (thanks to having his vocal chords ripped out), Snake Eyes – the Ninja component of G I Joe’s ‘Real American Hero’ team – is able to share his perspective on Charlie’s fate, what lurks under the sofa, and how sex is for plastic toys with no genitals. As embodied by the athletic Allan Henry, he achieves all this while darting about, using the Bats entrance way as a jungle gym, back-flipping off the walls and finally climbing them to disappear. Impressive.  

After all that testosterone, the minimalist movements and Monroesque voice of Barbie – the only toy who can be “cool and hot at the same time” – bring a new tone to the collective trauma of Charlie’s demise. Mind you, she does have a multi-directional hip socket – splendidly displayed by Carmel McGlone – and her cute looks hide a ruthless interior … Hypnotic.

At this point I much mention that Yorick – a.k.a. the head of/off Lego Man – is a key component in the mystery but it is Barbie’s friend Share-a-Smile Becky, in her wheelchair, who has discovered there is more to the tragedy than meets the eye. She wants to escape from the whole tawdry mess – and Salesi Le’ota makes us want to root for them. They capture the bitch /victim relationship perfectly. Deeply poignant.

Between them Barbie and Becky (in an unusual-for-the-genre two-hander scene) reveal there is also more to Charlie than is commonly known, raising all sorts of questions about what exactly he’d seen that felt compelled to act out with his dolls.

It all gets a bit hot for Ball, who calls a break (another unusual phenomenon at Bats).

After interval Jack springs from his box – after 3 years of imprisonment, he claims – to regale us with malevolent, raunchy, scatological, Cockney (as played by his co-creator Natalie Medlock) banter. A self-confessed cynic and sado-masochist, he does reveal his softer, gentler, romantic side, before reverting to type with revelations about behaviour that maybe is not too surprising for one who has had to live with a spring up his bum. Bizarre.

It takes Teddy to close Jack down, and the mellow tones of Ginette McDonald’s 123 year-old Russian bear varies the rhythm and pace yet again. She may have suffered the inevitable insensitivity of a dismissive Charlie, her stuffing may be leaking from her wrists, but she has the gravitas and wisdom of age. Memorable.

The final contrast brings us a figurine of the Peter Pan of the human world, now destined to be as timeless as Marilyn or Elvis; an icon whose ability to touch and be touched reaches well beyond our hearts. Michael Jackson, made manifest by Dan Musgrove, clearly has star status in this toy box. The signature moves, vocal characteristics and singing voice round off a richly varied 80-odd minutes – and who better to ‘Heal the World’ so all the toys can help “make it a better place for you and for me”? Icky-sticky.

The first night line up was very well prepared – no-one was groping for lines – and the theatre, as always at Bats openings, was brimming with good will. At times manic energy of some performers distorted the vocal delivery in ways that cause key words to be lost which would not matter if it was just trivial fun, but there are gems of insight in this script and our experience is the richer for being able to glean them.

I imagine that anyone going more than once, for whatever reason, will get a different take on the text and characters. The proverbial bar was set high last night so the challenge for future performers is great. Take your chances and enjoy.  

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