Fortunately one is upheld by an immense sense of virtue when attending historical-educational productions, so any mirth is a bonus. It can’t have been easy to have to make hilarious comedy let alone a soul-stirring drama out of the ultra-respectable Plunket Society, and there are spots in Who Needs Sleep Anyway? when the strain tells. But Hall and Hall have anchored the play with the world’s biggest and bonniest bouncing baby ever, and Mark Neilson’s ebullient performance as the gigantic Baby P melts the audience entirely.

This play has been especially commissioned to mark the centenary of the snappily named Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children. Better known as the Plunket Society, it was started right here in Dunedin by Truby King, knighted hero, and his wife Bella, who probably contributed a whole lot more than she was given credit for. This means that there will be no scintillating exposé of the great man, and not a great deal for the writers to do but try desperately to make dramatic his life work.

Roger Hall apparently concentrated on the history, teaching us about the appallingly high death rate among babies a century ago, about humanized milk and vaccinations, baby farming and Karitane nurses, while daughter Pip was weaving through it all a contemporary tale of a rather stereotypical young couple depending on Plunket to help them raise Baby P to the stage where they can wave him off to school.

We don’t get the chance to engage deeply with any of the historical figures and the episodic pattern can drag, but director Conrad Newport is no stranger to bringing history to life, having recently directed the touring King and Country, and he keeps this production bright and breezy, indulging us with some fun Coarse Acting touches.

Who Needs Sleep Anyway? is also going to tour and the set reflects this: coat-stands for costumes on either side; a screen for projections of children’s drawings to illuminate the scenes; and coloured blocks for the actors to arrange as furniture. The actors play up to ten characters each, with the help of nothing more than a few key costume bits and bright cardboard cartoon props. And a busy little crew they are, throwing themselves enthusiastically into each new character.

Kelley Young and Craig Geenty are chiefly memorable as the sleep-deprived parents of Baby P, succeeding in winning audience sympathy despite some clichéd situations (the wife who plans on natural childbirth screaming for drugs at the first pangs; the husband insisting on recording every gory moment on his handycam).

Joel Allen carries off with aplomb his main role as the valiant Sir Truby, entering to a trumpet fanfare and remaining noble even when galloping his literal hobbyhorse round the stage, while Cheryl Amos is appealing as his supportive and practical wife Bella. The audience enjoyed the doubling of Allen as a manic Jason Gunn accompanied by Amos as Jude Dobson, but fell silent as the pair spun a rather tasteless Wheel of Misfortune to hand out various hideous diseases as prizes.

Sara Best is the only actor to retain the same character, and she holds together the history side with demure charm as the Plunket nurse named Daisy (yes yes possibly just to allow the frantic mums to sing "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do" but it does suit her!). Her no-nonsense Mary Poppins air sweetens the medicine of all the statistics we are expected to swallow.

That the play is more than a series of informative skits in praise of Plunket however is due to the marvellous Mark Neilson as Baby P, an enormous challenge for any parent but still adorable in his stretch’n’grows, wriggling his rolypoly bum and pattering his fat little buttery feet, confiding, "It sucks, being a baby". 

Adult actors as children are nothing new of course, but the device is well justified here and Baby P is a hugely successful creation. Writer Caryl Churchill, who specified that in her Cloud 9 a 5-year-old girl should be played by a man, said this was to indicate the powerful emotional impact of a small child, and that reasoning is utterly appropriate to show how massively a new baby looms in the lives of its young parents, helpless without the wise guidance of Plunket…

So although the play is too long drawn out and the jokes are a tad predictable, Hall and Hall have managed to make the lessons palatable. And after all, where would we be without our iconic Plunket Society? I mean, did you know that hospitals wouldn’t take children under the age of two?! Most of us owe something to the grand old institution – in fact I should declare an interest: my aunt Jocelyn Ryburn was National President for all of my childhood. Plunket was a world first, and worthy of this celebration. Not for nothing was Truby King given a state burial, and the streets lined with prams for his funeral cortege!
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Roger and Pip Hall’s assignment was to dramatise Plunket’s century of history, and to make it fun.

The result is a bright slapstick comedy in which episodes from Plunket’s annals (Truby King takes on the mission of helping New Zealand mothers and saving their babies, Karitane Hospitals start up, and so on) with snippets of social history (baby farming, campaigns for fluoride and car seats), and milestones from the life of Baby P (from feeding and the horrors of nappies through to the first schoolbag), who is played gleefully by the very adult-sized Mark Neilson.

Nielson and Sara Best, as the starchy, irreproachable, and very nice Nurse Daisy, are the only actors with single parts, while Joel Allen, Cheryl Amos, Kelley Young, and Craig Geenty swap almost seamlessly between multiple roles (my favourite was Cheryl Amos’ take-off of television personality Jude Dobson).

Mostly, it works. The set is bright and nursery-like, the pace unrelenting, and the production has a generally polished air. Sometimes, though, the tension between informing an audience and entertaining it shows: now and then the good humour degenerates into banality, and the jokes are just not as funny as we expect from a Hall play.

Still, Who Needs Sleep Anyway? hit the spot with last night’s large audience, almost certainly consisting largely of people who have been both Plunket babies and Plunket parents, at its world premiere at the Fortune.

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