It is rather tragic when comedy fails. Thomas Sainsbury’s award-winning black comedy, Loser, was turned into a spectacularly bad scream-fest when performed by Whitireia’s third year Stage and Screen Arts students at BATS last week.

The blurb promised a hilarious portrayal of the “ruthless cruelties and absurdities of school life” as six ex-classmates turn up for their ten year reunion. It dwelled all too long on drawn-out flashbacks (encouraged suicide attempts, unrequited crushes, and endless taunting) of the characters’ unhappy school days and after an hour it still hadn’t got to the reunion.

The ensemble cluttered the stage. The frequent screaming and melodramatic acting really hindered the success of the show. Furthermore, the constant use of the word ‘fuck’ made it lose all impact and just became cringe-worthy.

The tech was somewhat awry with characters trying to speak over the top of music and several times they were in the dark while delivering their lines.

The ending showed promise as the ever anxious ex-Head Girl read her therapist a poem she wrote about the reunion. If only that sense of unconscious foolishness had been achieved by the other actors all throughout the show.

The intentionally pitiable set, with its streamers, balloons and awkward high school dance feel to it, aligned all too well with the sorry performances of the evening.

Loser runs from 20 to 24 March.

Closer is structured around the characters meeting and breaking up, giving little else away. This intentional distancing effect, without an easily graspable flow of time, prevents any way of becoming emotionally invested in the characters.

Written in 1997 by Patrick Marber, Closer has won a bunch of awards, including the Lawrence Olivier Award for Best New Play, and has had successful runs on both Broadway and the West End. It explores ideas of lust, jealousy, art, artists, and the construction of a fictional self.

Love is more a force of destruction in the play rather than a happy attainment and sex, rather, is the binding force. The start is saturated with sexual humour that appeals to those smutty minded folk in the crowd. Apparently, men want a girl who comes like a train, but with elegance. These moments of comic brilliance got the play off to a good start. However, after this initial delight, the play seemed to fizzle out in the first half into a dry exposition. The second half on the whole was more engaging and entertaining.

The characters, for all their personality flaws, were quite intriguing, as they ranged from lovably awkward and almost likeable to arrogant and painfully clichéd. The actors, for the most part, were adept at portraying these progressions. Some of the British accents faltered at times, but on the whole it did not detract from the performance. Perhaps less pacing and flatter shoes would be more fitting to the required intensity of some moments.

I feel that the new Whitireia theatre was a dwarfing space for such an intimate play. However, the wide stage did lend itself well to the subway-inspired set and the deliberately distancing nature of the play. Lighting was nicely understated and the multimedia in the internet scene in particular proved effective. As Closer is dialogue-heavy, the use of swively office chairs helped break up the potential for static conversations and added a bit of movement to the performances.

CLOSER
By Patrick Marber
22 June – 1 July

This crafty piss-take of New Zealand celebrity culture was in the vein of such ‘reality TV’ shows as Kath and Kim and Summer Heights High. The actors were courageous to perform in such an intimate setting, with no stage and no differentiation in lighting, where they could clearly see every face in the audience. The tiny space available to the actors at one end of the bar meant the action was limited. The actors’ ability to retain the audience’s attention almost exclusively through dialogue attests to their talent.
Paul Waggott, previously of DOG SEES GOD fame, captured the essence of a goofy children’s talk show host, and Jonny Potts, starring as special guest Richie Richardson, took self-absorbed celebrity to a whole new level. They weren’t afraid to let fly with a mix of somewhat obscure pop-culture references (anyone remember Carly Binding?) and nerdy Hamlet allusions, appealing to a range of tastes in the audience.
Clips of Medical Street, their version of the nation’s most loved/hated prime time soap opera, were a treat to watch on the TV screen that they incorporated into the act. The repetitious moral message (smoking is so not cool) and the iTunes advertising gave the show a wonderfully post-modern feel.

The “pay what you think it was worth” casualness of the show added to its charm. Let’s hope that the audience paid generously so that we get to see these great actors on stage again sometime soon.

Skoolnite
By Jonny Potts
6 – 9 April at BATS

Sheep got off to a slow and uneasy start as the cast attempted to tackle themes that were a smidgen beyond their years of experience and clashed considerably with their youthful looks. The cabaret-inspired song and dance that accompanied the provincial shearing competition was rather peculiar, if not slightly amusing for its incongruity with the apparent realism of the piece.

The swift scene changes and significant jumps in time were detrimental to the success of the early segments. They lacked enough depth and clarity to come off convincingly and perhaps were what caused the actors to appear as if they did not believe in the scene. This in turn made it difficult for the audience to buy into it too.

The play gained some much needed depth during the intense Dresden, 1945 war scene. It was very daring to have the characters speak almost entirely in German and most certainly paid off. The actors revealed their talent for engaging the audience despite speaking in a language most of us did not understand. Freya Sadgrove and Nathan Mudge in particular were outstanding on opposites sides of the political divide.
The send up of nineteen eighties political theatre was an absolute highlight and had the audience bursting with laughter. Meek has a knack for writing strong women characters which was great to watch, especially as they gained more stage time as the play unfolded into the more recent periods of history.

Two different casts are performing Sheep, having over a week-long run of shows each. It would be well worth going to see it twice to get the full experience. Some of the performances were not polished enough to be on stage yet and they needed some more rehearsing to get it up to standard and to work out the flaws. However, with Sheep running for almost three weeks, the show is bound to improve immensely with time.

SHEEP
by Arthur Meek
25 May – 11 June at BATS

I know that it is preferable to support locally owned bookstores, and indeed necessary to help them survive, but there is this hopelessly stingy student voice inside of me whispering “you could get that way cheaper online.” The Book Depository is one such site where you can buy cheap(er) books online, with the added incentive of free shipping worldwide.

The Book Depository was founded in 2004 and focuses on selling ‘less of more’ rather than ‘more of less’. This refers to an emphasis on selling a wide range of good quality books rather than focussing on high sales of your average bestseller. It does a roaring trade and has more than 2.5 million unique titles ready to be shipped, within 48 hours, from its fulfillment centre in Gloucester, United Kingdom.

Through its Dodo Press imprint, The Book Depository is re-printing rare and out-of-print books at a rate of more than one hundred each week. They are justified in being committed to this project, as at present there are only a few million titles in print despite there being more than 30 million titles ever printed in the English language.

Just to give you a glimpse of how much cheaper this site is for buying books, here is an example. The late David Foster Wallace’s unfinished novel The Pale King published just last month, demands a steep price in local bookstores, but online it’s half the price at around $25.

It is a bit worrying when the second most Google searched word in relation to The Book Depository is ‘scam’. Do not be alarmed though, the business is legit. This talk of scam is mainly bloggers getting antsy about the price variation between the .com and .co.uk URLs for the site. In saying that, do beware that the .com site is usually marginally cheaper so it is best to double check both sites before placing an order. David Sedaris’s Dress Your Family In Corduroy and Denim (2004 hardback edition) was four dollars cheaper on the .com site when I checked earlier in the week. It all sounds very nit-picky, but hey, we’re poor students with brains to feed.

Simply for the sake of furthering my meticulous scrutiny of the .com versus .co.uk site variation, I discovered that Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals (2006 paperback edition) was unavailable on the .com site, but was available for sale on the .co.uk site. ‘Tis strange. Another slight downer is the fact that the site does not have prices in New Zealand dollars, but the Australian dollar is close enough to act as a fairly accurate estimate of the cost.

Check out www.thebookdepository.co.uk for more information

He ingeniously whittled down most of New Zealand’s drinking problems to bourbon aka domestic violence in a bottle. With effortless ease, he segued from domestic violence to semen, and back again, without his audience losing track.

He has a real gift for rapid changes in tone and pace, going from hilarious to dead serious in the same sentence. The stunted nature of his quick switches into the serious made it somewhat difficult to keep on track and stop the giggling. This is not a dig at his style or taste, but rather, it proves his comic abilities.

Brad Zimmerman, with his wit and shining charisma, is a comedian not to be missed in the 2011 New Zealand International Comedy Festival.

Grown Up
By Brad Zimmerman
3-7 May at Club Ivy

Director Tim Spite and his company SEEyD deserve a whole sack of kudos for pulling off this ambitious project. To bring to the stage a show that parodies one of the most well-known, big-budget spy action series in film history is truly remarkable.

The use of silhouette enabled the cast to cleverly perform iconic Bond moments such as helicopter scenes and gun fights on the top of moving trains. The four talented actors took on an impressive range of characters, from bumbling spies, bloke-ish cops and evil villains, to flamboyant tour-guides, elderly Maori folk and sexy French women. The various levels of the stage were used to the cast’s advantage. Some very funny scenes involving a trapdoor were highlights of the evening. Furthermore, the speedo-clad man that emerged from said trapdoor caused many to snicker.

The script played well to its audience, with references to the social and political goings on of the ’80s, but the David Lange quotes were a tad predictable and lacking in wit. This is my only complaint in an otherwise fine piece of physical comedy.

The Spy Who Wouldn’t Die Again
at Downstage Theatre
By SEEyD
31 March—23 April
(6.30pm Tuesday-Wednesday, 8pm Thursday – Saturday)
$25 tickets for students

The group is local chapter of a worldwide grass-roots orgnaisation called Food Not Bombs.

Their aim is to make people aware of the unnecessary amount of waste our society produces.

It is estimated that New Zealanders waste $500 per capita on food every year. Much more is dumped by supermarkets and restaurants that aren’t able to sell food items after their use by date.

One activist, who wanted to remain anonymous because of the legality of what they’re doing, said the group believes food and shelter should be free. “They are basic human needs that need to be met,” she said.

Food Not Bombs has been operating in Wellington for more than ten years. So chances are that you’ve sampled some of their loot at some point, especially if you’re hanging around the university. If you drank some Vitamin Water handed out during Clubs’ Week, it probably came from a Wellington dumpster.

Once, local dumpster divers found a whopping 87 bottles of beer, but they’ve also had luck finding top shelf spirits and fine wines. But their main haul from supermarket dumpsters is trolleys full of all kinds of food—from fruit and vegetables to bagels and pastries—which they give away to people on the street.

It’s never a problem finding someone to take it. If they have too much, they simply put it in a box on the footpath with the sign ‘free’ on it. “Some families rely on such donations,” another activist said.

When Food Not Bombs is handing out food on the streets, passers-by often ask “What’s the catch?” and “What do you want from me in return?” There’s no catch. It’s just free food. And it’s not as grotty as you might think.

Food Not Bombs members say the food they find is usually wrapped or dumped in bags so it’s clean and good to eat.

Questions have been raised about the wastage of some of Victoria University’s halls of residence after one hall cited effort as an excuse for not donating excess food to charity.

Attempts made by St George Hall residents to set up recycling and get the excess food to be donated to charity were ignored by the hall’s catering company MAD Catering, believing it would be too much effort to do so.

Residents at St George have voiced unhappiness with the decision.

“We pay a lot to live here. We pay for the food, therefore if we want the leftovers to go to charity then that’s where they should go,” said resident Kerry Gallagher.

Manager of Wellington’s Night Shelter Mike Leon, which was the recent recipient of a donation of rice from Massey University earlier in the week, said he was always receptive of food donations.

He said the shelter would be willing to co-ordinate with other charities to fit the cost of transport and storage of excess food.

The shelter caters to 47 men per night who would otherwise sleep on the streets, and this year has had to purchase more beds to keep up with the greatest demand it has seen in its 40-year history.

Both Weir House and Victoria House have recycling processes in place, but do not have a donation policy in place.

“Weir House and Vic House do not need to donate excess food to charity, as the students are able to go back for seconds, and most food gets eaten,” said Victoria Director of Student Services Ruth Moorhouse.