Keep lunchtime concerts rolling on

Mentioned in Despatches: Advent Sketches 2:

The Buying Of The Presents On Christmas Eve, my father, iron hair like an inverted scrubbing brush, and quite as bristly, took the family, minus a kitchen busy mother, up High Street. We went as we had always done, walking, because the street was closed to cars, allowing the Pipe Band to play its way into solvency again. Small children marched in file behind the band as boasting boys bounded in and out of the ranks trying to make the lusty pipers laugh. Townsfolk wandered over the road like flocks of leaderless sheep, to be seduced by Judas rams beckoning the unwary into the trap of tinsel trinkets which were to become the

of an always forgiving Christmas day, because, after all, Christmas is for giving. And we would stop and talk to the Wisemans and the Webbers, the Joneses, and the Allens, greeting them like long lost friends, which they were, as we hadn’t spoken to them since the previous Christmas Eve, and wouldn’t again until the next. We always bought a jug for mother, or a daringly original vase, and once I bought a black plaster of Paris Scotty dog which turned out to be cast as a true immortal, never to be cast out. Then came a box of Adams Bruce chocolates in coloured cellophane which turned the world green, or rose, or amber, and putting forever an end to the lie about a white Christmas. Our Christmases were shimmering, heat haze browns and dusty greens and the nearest we ever got to white was on the curl of a Boxing day wave.

Lunchtime Concerts: Thursday lunchtime concerts. Free! Most performers came from the Conservatorium, but others were offered places as well. Sadly, the University administration has demanded an admission fee. The administrators do not seem to have caught on to the financial benefits to the university of the ongoing advertising/marketing gains from the constant, international quality exposure. Maybe they can be persuaded to change, because all three lunchtime gigs reflect so well on the University of Waikato. Roll on lunchtimes 2019! actors, in character, also interact with the audience on occasion so that the boundaries between source material, the real present, and the play itself are constantly broken. In turn, that has the effect of increasing the comic intensity – and the audience finds itself laughing aloud in fun, and an interesting kind of relief, at gags which would be really offensive in some other contexts. The comedy is very very, funny, but as a result, the occasional moments of pathos, of poignant revelation, are enhanced to a sobering degree. In an exhibition of powerfully sensitive writing from playwright James Cain, three apparent stereotypes, so recognisable in staged, play-it-forlaughs Kiwikulcha, become fully fleshed characters, interesting, revealing, and utterly, disturbingly, refreshingly, human. Disclosing the humanity behind the comedy is a significant gift to audiences. As Cain constructs it, and the three actors perform it, everyone in the audience is brought to link the story with their own understanding of the world, sometimes uncomfortably, but always to our own advantage. The play is filled with such pithy, personal, illuminating observations, and these lift what is already a powerful work into something uniquely satisfying. This is elegantly written, despite the characteristically blokey language. Within those linguistic qualifications it probes depths of understanding and nuances emotional sensitivities which are unique. Last night. I experienced ‘‘drama perfectus’’ from a minimalist set peopled by three superbly cast players. What more could one want…