It was a stroke of inspired programming to revive two New Zealand plays of such contrasting styles for the graduation productions that bring Toi Whakaari’s 40^th year to a close. 

The post-war New Zealand depicted in the heightened realism of Bruce Mason’s revered The Pohutukawa Tree and the post-war New Zealand depicted in the rumbustious surrealism of James Beaumont’s Wild Cabbage are worlds apart theatrically though at the heart of both is a lonely woman isolated from family and society as the country changes from a rural society to an urban one.

With the exception of Red Mole New Zealand theatre hadn’t really come face to face before 1985 with such theatrical anarchy as Wild Cabbage, with its outrageous parody of family life, its slapstick, its complicated word games, its repetitions, and its expressionistic staging of urban isolation. All of which are well performed by the graduating students. 

Leo Gene Peters’ full-on production takes place in Te Whaea’s large basement theatre where the actors cheekily greet the audience and in which the setting (Alice Hill) for the remote cabbage farm is created by a semi-circular bank of large wooden crates crammed with the clothing, cooking utensils and quirky family possessions.

When we come back for the second half our seating has been rearranged (not always with the best of sightlines retained) and the crates have become the threatening buildings of a nightmare Wellington with a starlit sky behind.

The play begins with the cartoonish birth of Dad and Mum’s third child, a daughter called Freak, who is a misfit from the start on the cabbage farm. Eventually she comes known as The Cabbage Case to three officious officials (two angels in the original 1985 version) under the eye of the unseen and all-powerful Mr. G. During the interval in the drama school students’ common room an aged Dad and Mum enter to tell us time has passed since act one and it’s time to get back into the theatre pronto. 

Freak has found her way to Wellington and is lost in the dark labyrinthine streets where danger seems to lurk at every corner. The lighting, sound effects (superb throughout the evening (Sean Hawkins – Halo Collins), and the choreographed menace of the city inhabitants is adroitly done but the sequence goes on and on and on until the play at last ends with a confrontation between a visible Mr. G and the distraught Freak who, in Catherine Waller’s touching performance, remains throughout the emotional core of the play despite my wishing the second half had been cut in half. 
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I well remember the excited buzz that accompanied the debut – upstairs at The Depot’s old candle factory space in Courtenay Place – of The New Depot Collective’s production of James Beaumont’s Wild Cabbage. It was 1985, I had just returned to Wellington after many years away, and this introduced me to the new talent that was blowing cobwebs out of ‘establishment theatre’.

A wacky, idiosyncratic pastiche of heartland rural NZ life v city life, with the misfit Freak at its core, was ‘Cold Comfort Farm meets Mean Streets’ delivered in distinctively Kiwi vernacular – written and directed by an expatriate Australian, incidentally.

Now expatriate American and MTA graduate of Toi Whakaari, Leo Gene Peters directs this remounting – and reimagining – as part of the Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School’s Graduation Season. And 25 years on, it still works as bizarre ‘alternative’ theatre. I love the alacrity with which non-New Zealanders continue to ‘hold the mirror up’ to Kiwi culture (both Beaumont and Peters have impressive track records in this regard).

In the Te Whaea basement space, a set (designed by Alice Hill), constructed from old wooden crates, evokes the rural cottage inhabited by Mum (Jennifer Martin), Dad (Simon Leary), daughter Barbie (Megan Alexander) and son Lout (Michael Leota).  They and the rest of the cast hang about the set as the audience arrives, greeting, chatting, welcoming and acclimatising us to their world.  

The comedic action kicks off with Mum’s waters breaking and the Freak (Catherine Waller) being born but she is steadfastly ignored as the daily routine – sleep, wake, wash, cook, eat (“Bugger off!”), work or whatever, eat, burp, bedtime (“Move!”)… – is repeated, over and over under Mum’s orders and to the honky-tonk sound of silent movie music.  

The important thing here is to notice the detail of what each character is up to in their own little world. Depending on where you sit you will get to know one or some of them quite well with barely a coherent word being spoken … And amid this mangle of self-absorbed humanity, a still and staring Freak tries to work out where she stands.

I take it that it is her impaling of the family cat on her fork that alerts the city bureaucrats – besuited and appearing aloft – to what comes to be known as ‘The Cabbage Case’.  Cloe [sic] (Tess Jamieson), Claire (Esmée Myers) and Chip (Ivana Palezevic) work for the heard but not seen Mr G (Jamie Smith). And the Freak, it seems, is the ‘wild cabbage’ of the title.

The bureaucrats’ scheduled ‘onsite interaction’ provokes a quirkily comic scene with the Freak but minimally disrupts the rest of the family’s routine. Life goes on at the farm while back in the city the trio contemplate the case and how they might bring her to ‘normalcy’.

At home, responsibility for looking after the Freak – who is given to whacking her own head with a wooden spoon – becomes a point of contention. And she gets beaten up, implied by glimpses of violent action almost ‘off’. There endeth the first act.

Out in the ‘common room’ foyer, a geriatric Mum and Dad inform us that time has passed and entertainingly interact with us, as an inert and silent Freak lurks, barely noticed.

We return to the performance area to find the whole space transformed. The bare boxes evoke a cityscape now, illuminated by judiciously placed lights against clusters of tiny lights that wonderfully capture the idea of Wellington’s hillside suburbs (lighting design, Tim Nuttall). I also need to highly commend Sean Hawkins for his sound design throughout both acts, and Halo Collins for operating the very exacting sound cues to perfection.

Once more the sense that were are getting an introductory sequence, to establish the city this time, turns out to be the substantive action, and the juice for us is in observing the detail; the compelling glimpses of so many aspects of city street life over a day and night or two. Meanwhile the ageless bureaucrats continue to consult the sonorous Mr G about The Cabbage Case …

It is into this alien environment that the Freak ventures, a ‘fish out of water’, adrift in the urban wilderness but more awe-inspired than fearful in the face of it. But where might she stand amid this ever-changing and constantly pulsating city …?  Splendid ensemble work here by all the cast.

Salvation is offered by the smooth-talking, microphone-clutching Mr G, back-lit so that we never see his face (how selfless act of this graduating actor!). His message is all about conforming, obeying, choosing the way as long as it is his way … But he breaks her spoon – and you will have to see the show to know the outcome and ponder its meaning.

Suffice to say there is a simple cautionary tale embedded in this darkly whimsical play. And it’s good to see that it has stood the test of time.

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