In April I was lucky enough to attend a work-in-progress production on Matiu/Somes Island, produced by New Pacific Theatre Collective and called ex_Isle of the Strangers.  This is part of a Victoria University PhD by Bert van Dijk.

Mokopuna Island, viewed from Matiu/Somes Island

The opportunity to put on any show on Matiu/Somes Island is obviously an amazing and unique opportunity.  While most parts of the production were entertaining and very well done, I felt that the production in many ways did not live up to the potential of the Somes Island location.

The programme hints that we will be “delighted, surprised and challenged by the ‘unknown’.”  The production is certainly ‘challenging’ and it was definitely worth seeing, but I feel that some parts of the production were a bit overdone.  Several of the things done in the play were the exact same things done in student theatre every other year:

• crossdressing
• actors violating the audience’s personal space
• a bit of near-nudity

Clearly these were intended to tick the ‘surprise’ and ‘challenge’ boxes.  Unfortunately, because nudity and cross-dressing are so popular in student theatre, they aren’t really challenging or surprising at all.  There was an opportunity here to do something totally original and unique, yet some parts of what we saw felt like a mishmash of many other student-theatre plays I have seen at Victoria University.

The weather was wonderful, as you can see by the photos.

The other major thing that didn’t work (for me, anyway) was the overall structure of the production. There were at least eight separate performances done in four different parts of the island, and six of the performances seemed completely unrelated to the rest (in particular, the taiko drummers at the beginning and the Maori musical kidnapping vignette). Even thematically, they just didn’t really fit in. Individually, each performance was great: entertaining and professionally done by everyone involved. But because they didn’t really fit together, the whole was never more than the sum of the parts.

I think, from an intellectual point of view, that the audience was, at various points, ‘delighted, surprised and challenged’.  But the production was missing a strong narrative thread: a story, with characters.  I’m not saying that we need a full-on re-enactment of the Monomyth … but any semblance of a narrative would have helped string together the disparate parts and make the whole thing into a more coherent story.  This might have helped elevate the production from ‘generic too-intellectual student theatre’ to ‘unique and amazing’.

Overall, the production was definitely enjoyable and thought-provoking.  I hope my comments are not taken as a personal attack on any of the people involved, but constructive criticism intended to help enhance their art.

Theatrereview has a more detailed review of the production by John Smythe (who was part of my group when I saw the production), with some robust discussion (including some comments by Bert himself) which might prove interesting.

Saying good-bye.

Posted by Luke H on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 11:35 pm.