GUY VAN EGMOND
Compromise, let me tell you, did not. The show’s four separate plays—the product of collaboration between two young and local playwrights—complimented each other well, coming together in a razor-sharp and water-tight anthology performance. They were hilarious and a little absurd, rather abstract at times and yet quietly twisting a very real knife into your heart.
The Final Nail, by By Mitchell Botting and Īhaka Martyn (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa; kōtirana, Ingarangi, Wēra, Aerani), was a timely political spoof that questioned who’s really responsible for injustice if we’re all “just following orders” from on high. The characters of this 1984-diorama seemed vague and stock at first and I liked it the least initially. However, as true motivations revealed themselves, the play proved itself to be a shrewd indictment of authoritarianism.
Possibly the crowd-favourite, Evening Sour, by Jack McGee & Emilie Hope, was a glorious first-date disaster? Success? Both? What seemed at first to be wooden small talk between a pessimist (Abby Lyons) and a mansplainer (Dom Flanagan) became a brutally honest and revealing back-and-forth that built into such deliciously tense chemistry that I forgot to breathe for a little while. This piece almost suffered from success, being so funny that the audience’s laughter cut and threw off the actors’ dialogue.
These last two performances featured a tall, wooden set-piece that could stand in as a gallows, the balcony of a wine bar, or even be torn to pieces, as in Evangelina Telfar & Nuanzhi Zheng’s Best Laid Plans. This hi-vis, Lord of the Flies trainwreck was delightful chaos, and showed off the versatility of the cast. In particular, Flanagan and Lyons played wildly contrasting characters to their previous roles, but carried them just as well. Best Laid Plans was a great pandemonium to end on, the kind that makes you turn to the stranger beside you and go “...what!?” with equal measures of bewilder— and excitement.
Here/there was actually the first piece, but I’ve saved it for last as a personal favourite. Written by Ella Yiannoutsos & Jill Kwan (from Greek and Chinese/Malaysian backgrounds, respectively), Here/there was a bitter mirror to our institutionally-racist migration policy and the impersonality of bureaucracy. It was abstract to a degree, funny and silly, but also deeply grieving. Romina Meneses, as a migrant at the whim of three fickle pencil-pushers, struck chord after chord, cutting into my own cultural background and my work as a civil servant.
Compromise was something special; I’m genuinely grateful that I got to witness this nexus of talent. Varied and out-there, yet restrained and expertly-crafted, it had it all. Some of Pōneke’s finest was on display—as well as incredible talent on loan from Tāmaki Makaurau—which makes me incredibly hopeful about the future of theatre in Aotearoa. Compromise was the kind of work that exists because of people who truly care about making theatre; people with talent but no place to apply it, so they made their own place, together.