RACY ROBYN Her sexy new role
Robyn Malcolm gets risque, Shortland Street star Jennifer Ludlam is less than glamorous and Maori TV presenter Te Kohe Tuhaka is dapper in a suit: they’re some of our favourite performers as never seen before and highlight Auckland Theatre Company’s 25th anniversary plans.
New Zealand’s biggest theatre company will start 2018 by putting its weight behind a theatrical adaptation of Maurice Gee’s award- winning book Under the Mountain. The famous Kiwi story sees red- headed twins, Rachel and Theo, join the mysterious Mr Jones to fight the Wilberforces, giant creatures waking from sleep beneath Auckland’s extinct volcanoes. Playwright Pip Hall has adapted the book, which has previously been made into a TV series and film, for the stage. She has no idea how designers will create monsters that morph from humans into slug- like forms in the blink of an eye, as well as underground lava caves and volcanic eruptions.
But Hall i s confident visionary director Sara Brodie can do it.
“It’s quite a daunting task adapting such a well- loved book and I have tried really hard to stick to the heart of the book and be faithful to the story so I hope it will feel like I’ve done it justice,” says Hall. “I’m looking forward to being there with my own kids, who said I should turn the book into a play, and being excited and feeling like a kid again.”
Brodie won’t reveal what she has planned but has devised a way for the Wilberforces to transform. It will be a highlight of ATC’s 25th anniversary year which artistic director Colin McColl says celebrates family and a new generation of theatre- makers.
“It’s vital that we are constantly bringing new work to the stage and new talent to tell our stories,” he said. The 2017/ 18 season begins next month with The Navigators, which features three new shows made by choreographer Malia Johnson and theatre writers/ directors Kate Parker and Katie Wolfe ( see sidebar).
That’s followed by contemporary US play Red Speedo, which stars Chelsea Preston- Crayford, Ryan Carter, Scott Wills and Wesley Dowdell.
Red Speedo is the only US work for the year, with the company performing three new NZ plays, one British comedy called Filthy Business, which stars Jennifer Ludlam, and remaking t wo classics with a Kiwi flavour.
Saucy pictures of popular actress Malcolm show George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession is unlikely to bear much resemblance to its first performances in London in 1902.
Malcolm plays Mrs Warren, whose well- to- do daughter confronts her after discovering her first- rate education was paid for via her mother’s brothel earnings. McColl has handed directing duties to Eleanor Bishop who, earlier this year, updated and reimagined Greg McGee’s Foreskin’s Lament.
“I have no doubt that Eleanor will do something very interesting with Mrs Warren’s Profession given that she’s keen on the idea of exploring the sex industry in New Zealand,” says McColl. “The work she did on Foreskin’s Lament drew a phenomenal response; the theatre was full of young people and it’s exciting to see new audiences.”
He directs an updated version of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard to be set in NZ and star Te Kohe Tuhaka as a young Maori entrepreneur climbing the corporate ladder. As well as Under the Mountain, David Mamea’s Still Life With Chickens and Stuart Hoar’s Rendered round out the NZ productions.
And in March, ATC partners with the Auckland Arts Festival to bring a large- scale production of the George Orwell’s 1984 to New Zealand.