Peak performances bring novel to life The classic Kiwi story, Under the Mountain, is making its stage debut but the challenges are immense and time is running out, writes
Glenn McConnell.
As an 11-year-old, Sara Brodie would sit down every Sunday in front of her distorted staticridden television, waiting for the next instalment of Maurice Gee’s Under the Mountain.
The pre-teen crushed hard on actor Lance Warren, who played the twin Theo in the 1981 eight-part television series. She loved the story about evil destruction-obsessed aliens living inside Auckland’s volcanic maunga. But looking back, she says, it’s lucky she wasn’t living in Auckland at the time.
‘‘New Zealand landscape suddenly comes alive when you read this book. I think I would have freaked out,’’ she says. But that fear didn’t lessen Brodie’s love for the story. Decades later, and on the latter side of her 40s, she’s bringing the classic Kiwi tale to life on the stage in Auckland.
In fact, she’s determined to bring back her old feelings for the film for a new generation. When Under The Mountain launches after Waitangi Day, Brodie says she wants the audience – ‘‘anyone aged over eight’’ – to be ‘‘fascinated, awestruck’’ and a bit spooked.
‘‘It is spooky, but it’s not terrifying,’’ she says. It’s a sci-fi horror, fuelled by the destruction-crazed mud aliens and a geographic wonder, thanks to its setting under the volcanoes.
‘‘I didn’t realise until this book that New Zealand was built on volcanoes,’’ she says. ‘‘And then that there’s an entire city full of volcanoes. Wow. Of course, when I first came to Auckland I was 18 and I remember just looking round at these strange maunga and then remembering the book.’’
But making a book about volcanoes, tunnels, mud aliens and magical stones come to life on stage isn’t easy. The script, put together by Pip Hall, is riddled with the four words: ‘‘And performs some magic’’.
Magic. ‘‘How are we going to make this happen?’’ asks Brodie. Her expectations are high. So, too, are