How a loathing of DIY created one of our greatest playwrights
It’s possible some of New Zealand’s most iconic plays might never have been written if it weren’t for a roll of wallpaper.
Sir Roger Hall, whose latest play Winding Up – a sequel to his much-loved middle-age romance Conjugal Rights – has just finished a debut run in Auckland and is heading off around the rest of the country, reckons it was his loathing for decorating that drove him to his typewriter.
‘‘I am hopeless at DIY. When we were first married I did some wallpapering and completely lost it,’’ he confesses.
‘‘I rushed out of the room and said [to wife Dianne] ‘look, get somebody in professionally and I will earn enough money at the typewriter in my spare time to pay for it’, which is the bargain I struck and kept.’’
It’s a bargain Kiwi theatre lovers are thankful for too, and Hall has the knighthood to prove it. He was delighted to receive it last year for his role in developing New Zealand drama, but he understands the backlash against such honours.
He’s slightly less chuffed with his status as the so-called ‘‘godfather’’ of the New Zealand stage.
‘‘The godfather is a slightly threatening figure. Am I a threatening figure? I hope not. So, I’m godfather since I’ve been around for a long time.’’
He says a friend told him that, until Glide Time and Middle Aged Spread came along, Kiwi theatres didn’t do Kiwi plays, they were ‘‘very wary and very nervous of them’’.
‘‘Those two plays were particularly about New Zealand characters. People recognised them. First the professional theatres did them and then most of the community theatres did them and that gave theatres – and audiences – confidence.
‘‘They weren’t worried about it any more and now we just take it for granted that [when a play comes out] it is probably a New Zealand play. It’s just not a factor in terms of audiences deciding whether to go or not.’’
Hall has written more than 40 plays and won numerous awards and accolades for them, including a 15-month run for
Middle Aged Spread in London’s West End, the Variety Artists Club of New Zealand’s Scroll of Honour and the 2015 Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement so his strengths obviously lie in far gentler pursuits than putting up shelves.
‘‘Oh God, no, I couldn’t put up a shelf. I probably got it from my own father, who couldn’t do anything like that. He could pump up a bicycle wheel, that’s about it, really.
‘‘But seriously, it was just not part of my English, middle-class background to do DIY, so I didn’t.
‘‘I know I’m terrible at it and I really hate it. I said, if I’m not doing it properly, why am I doing it? Get somebody in to do whatever task is required and do it properly.’’
These days he lives in an apartment in Auckland’s Takapuna, which he describes a ‘‘halfway house between this [a family home] and Rymans’’, the aged-care facilities.
Getting there, the downsizing process, however, was painful. That’s likely why it’s one of the themes of Winding Up.
‘‘In the play, Barry just does not want to get rid of his books because there’s a lot of emotional stuff with books,’’ he says. ‘‘A lot of my plays are all about myself. You use your own life.
‘‘People say I make fun of them, and I say, well, I’m actually making much more fun of myself, which is true. All the stupid things I do, I think, well, I might as well make some money out of it and put into the character.’’
Painful though the initial processes may have been, the apartment lifestyle suits Hall. His study, his writing space is there, although he says it shouldn’t matter where you are. He cites J K Rowling’s early days cranking out chapters of Harry Potter in a coffee shop – ‘‘If you really want to do it you will find a way to do it.
‘‘To go from a standard threebedroom house into an apartment, you do downsize quite a lot and you don’t have to do all those maintenance things or worry about getting people in to do all that for you. Of course you have to pay management fees but then you know any house takes a lot of maintenance fees every year.’’
Fans shouldn’t expect his next play to be about old age, or set in a block of apartments, but one thing he probably won’t be ‘‘winding up’’ is the writing.
‘‘My standard joke is this is my fifth last play. I say, ‘No that’s it. I’m not doing any more.’
‘‘And right now, that’s how I think, but we’ll see. At no point am I saying that’s the last play, because the muse comes along and I’m always much happier writing than when I’m not writing, so it may happen.
‘‘I can say it’ll be the last play about old age, how about that?’’
‘‘People say I make fun of them, and I say well, I’m actually making much more fun of myself, which is true.’’
Sir Roger Hall
■ Winding Up, with Alison Quigan and Mark Hadlow, starts a two-night run in Hamilton on March 16, followed by Tauranga, Hawke’s Bay and New Plymouth. See Eventfinda for more details.
■ Winding Up hits Wellington’s Circa theatre with Ginette McDonald and Peter Hayden on May 9, and Palmerston North’s Centrepoint with Darien Takle and Tim Gordon on May 23.