Time warp trip does the trick
The set is as much a star of this ‘‘journey through the past darkly’’ as its high-profile cast.
Written in 1977, and first performed at Centrepoint the following year, this Life On Marsesque reveal of how things were 40-odd years ago is a fitting way to kick off the theatre’s 45th birthday season. As the play flicks back and forth over a 10-week timeframe, Sean Doyle’s faithfully recreated single multi-living space set with 1970s period decor and furnishings makes it easy for the era’s three upwardly mobile professional couples to inhabit.
It’s a pre-pc, pre-internet, precellphone world, where having colour TV and two channels was a novelty. Hard-wired rotary-dial telephones were standard, cigarette smoking inside was socially acceptable, fondues were a dining fad, and burnt orange and chocolate brown jump-suits were a fabulous female fashion idea.
The show, which flicks back and forth during 10 short scenes, almost needs a reference guide to explain to anyone who finds the socio-political circumstances baffling, what ‘‘putting the milk bottles out’’ meant and what the Values Party was about.
A social debate disguised as domestic tragi-comedy, concerns about housing, teen disenchantment, educational engagement, and haves and havenots were as much preoccupations then as they are now.
Dan Pengelly’s production of this Kiwi classic sees the welcome return of Simon Ferry to Centrepoint in the role of Colin.
Newly appointed as a secondary principal, Colin is struggling with the pressures of his job, the onset of middle-age, detached teenage children – and in the dutiful socialclimbing Elizabeth, played by Julie Edwards, a semi-detached wife.
Colin is the focal role and Ferry gives it due consideration – carefully balancing the character’s world-weariness and emotional conflicts as his marriage with Elizabeth stagnates and his relationship with Danielle Mason’s vivacious Judy takes off.
Although momentum lagged at times, given the on-stage talent, the production will certainly find its flow and can only build on its lovingly authentic ‘‘the past is a foreign country’’ credentials.