The yellow hut looks like a typical tramping hut: minimally furnished, with bunks, a table, various bits and pieces and some leafy debris. A cute little window gives the audience an indication of the bush setting. The hut is only a few hours from civilisation, but there’s snow outside and no cellphone coverage.

It’s Saturday night. Six occupants arrive in pairs, and at first it seems fairly obvious who knows who and why each person is there (with a couple of exceptions), but as things progress identity and motive become less certain.

A dodgy-sounding ghost story is told, and the presence of guns and a bottle of whisky complicate things further. …[More]

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Yellow Hut by Ella West, presented at Dunedin Fringe Festival by the Globe Theatre, is a pretty fun piece of community theatre. The cast of six invest themselves into their characters and the set neatly scaffolds the storyline.

One of the best things about Fringe is seeing early iterations of work and Yellow Hut is no exception. It has the bones of a great play, given some tightening of the script, adjustments to the pacing, and smoothing of the relationships between the characters. The cast warmed into their roles, although they felt through to the end like a group of strangers who aren’t gelling terribly well but are confined together. Donna, played by Sheena Townsend, and Geoff, played by Andrew Matheson, are the standouts. Donna managed the fragility of an abused and manipulated woman extremely well and with sympathy and respect.

The jump scare towards the end of the first half is very well received, causing nearly as many shrieks in the audience as on stage. The violence towards the end is similarly appropriately received, with gasps of horror and shock. By this stage it does feel a little bit comedic as well though – there are several moments when the cast very much look to be stifling giggles.

The show is a slow burn, taking almost the whole first act to set the scene and drop a few hints as to who is who and what’s going to happen. By contrast the second act is pretty fast moving – it feels a wee bit like everyone just wants to get it done.

There are some glitches in language cadence and continuity. For example, at one point Grant says to Geoff that Donna is very fond of him but it’s hard to see how she can be ‘fond’ when she has only known him for a few hours. I also wonder if the interpretation Tom has taken from the script when he describes the way Annalise comes on to him is the one I would have taken if I had read it – it feels a bit predatory and yuck where a police officer could be expected to be perhaps puzzled or curious about her behaviour. I suppose most of the characters are predatory and yuck so perhaps he is as well and I guess police officers can be predatory and yuck as well.

A note of warning to the cast and directors: it’s a hard no to point guns towards an audience, even if fully and carefully decommissioned. This part of the scene was extremely uncomfortable and most of the people at that side of the audience were leaning away from the gun’s muzzle. One of my guests, born and raised on farms and around guns was deeply unimpressed – “you don’t come back from accidents with guns. You just never point them at people.” 

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