Film, TV and Culture

Trygve (pronounced Trig-vee) Wakenshaw is the titular character in the play Mr Red Light.

Set in a bland suburban pie shop, Mr Red Light bursts in after a bank robbery gone wrong and takes hostage the store’s equally insipid clientele. They’re people who are parked in life, constantly confronted by road blocks, stop signs and, well, red lights but Wakenshaw says he doesn’t let obstacles stop him.

“I feel like if I get a red light or see one coming up, I’ll turn down a different street so the journey will take me a lot longer but I would have whipped around and gone some different places and had a nice little drive on the way.”

It’s what he’s been doing since he left New Zealand in 2008 to study in France. Rather than return home with his newly honed clowning skills, Wakenshaw made his own shows and has since travelled the world performing at festivals from Berlin to Beijing. His flexible face, exceptionally long legs and bendy body even saw the producers of the Pokemon movie Detective Pikachu hire him as the inspiration for the character Mr Mime.

Now one of our most successful theatrical exports is based in Prague. He returned to New Zealand only because Nightsong Productions’ Ben Crowder and Carl Bland had a role for him in Mr Red Light: “I have no interest in coming back and doing a Shakespeare [play] because you can do that anywhere; I don’t have any interest in doing a revival play. If it’s going to look like a play then I am not super interested in it but Ben and Carl bring something which, I think, is unlike a show you’ll see in Auckland.”

Mr Red Light is at the Aotea Centre’s Herald Theatre, Friday, August 30 to Sunday, September 22 before a six-city New Zealand tour. For full story, see nzherald.co.nz (Timeout entertainment, culture)