Circa Theatre’s latest production is the best warm-up to the worst time of the year.
Is there anything more Wellington-coded than a sold-out political satire at a waterfront theatre? Six election cycles in, and it seems the hype around Public Service Announcements’ triennial election satire is only building. You’d think more exposure to the Nact-First government would be the last thing any culturally minded Wellingtonian needed – but maybe a caricatured coalition can be an antidote to the chaos.
Patrons filled Circa Theatre for the show on Tuesday night, taking their seats as LunchMoney Lewis’s ‘Bills, Bills, Bills’ played over the speakers. The plot is laid out quickly, with thanks to a fake John Campbell whose “marvellous” well and truly rivals the real one’s. There are US naval ships in the Cook Strait, and something must be done about it – not by Erica Stanford, who takes all her advice from her AI bot Eric, nor Nicola Willis riding around on her e-scooter, nor Chris Bishop holding Simeon Brown, who is played by a gerbil in a cage. There’s only one man who could know what to do: Winston Peters.
So, a severely egg-headed Christopher Luxon sets off to find the foreign affairs minister. But he can’t help but notice another baldie skulking around the stage in silence. Could that be Peters, Luxon wonders? No, it’s just Tama – as in Tama Potaka, remember? “Oh!” replies Luxon. “You’re in the National Party!”
What ensues from there is two hours (including a 20-minute intermission) of political chaos. As news of the naval ships spreads, each party must come up with a response to the threat heading to Wellington Harbour. For the left bloc, this looks like waiting for the government to fuck up the response before saying anything. For National, it’s finding Peters. For Act, it’s perfecting the message discipline and sloganing before anything else. For NZ First, it’s making sure the downfall of New Zealand’s society doesn’t happen without them being a part of it.
Despite being an ensemble cast of only six – Cohen Holloway, Kali Kopae, Andrew Paterson, Jamie McCaskill, Brayden Cresswell and Anya Tate-Manning – there are plenty of political characters. Some of the best personalities are the ones we see the least in our headlines – like Act deputy leader Nicole McKee, who was a crowd favourite by the end of the show for killing off some of her colleagues.
What you’ll appreciate most about the script is that no one is sacred – not even the left bloc that has a hold on this city. Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick (whose famous “woke lesbo” sweater has been redesigned as “liberal carpet müncher”) rubs drugs into her gums while fielding requests for a threesome from Herald Now’s Ryan Bridge and Act Party leader David Seymour. And Te Pāti Māori president John Tamihere appears as a vampire with Jedi-like powers to puppeteer his co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi. Together, they perform the song and dance number ‘That’s a Māori’, a parody of Dean Martin’s ‘That’s Amore’.
A couple of non-politicians also get cameos. There’s a Twilight-inspired stand-off between the Greens and the Opportunity Party, set to Muse’s ‘Supermassive Black Hole’. The latter’s intrusion onto the Greens’ turf leads Swarbrick to declare “you’re Labour for people who make podcasts”. And Kiri Tamihere – daughter of John and wife of Waititi, and the party’s general manager – briefly appears to demand her husband “cook the woman some fuckin’ eggs”.
The play keeps up with the wild instability of our politics, with a small team of writers updating the script daily to keep up with the goings on in parliament – like the failed Penk coup, and some of Peters’ recent unsavoury language. It means the show, which opened on August 1 and runs for five weeks, stays fresh in its political commentary, with no two nights at Circa ever really the same.
But you can tell that keeping the script topical comes at a cost. There are missed lines at times and actors occasionally break character, with McCaskill hiding behind his cape as Vampire John Tamihere to laugh at the absurdity of the scene he’s in. And while you might expect a political comedy to regard itself as a bit more high brow than your usual satire, the fart jokes provide good comic relief.
That lack of pretension works well for the show. As someone also in the business of trying to make politics funny, I know a lot of self-doubt goes into creating a punchline out of the deeds of our most powerful. Often, it’s easiest to poke fun when you lean into the absurdity of it all – you don’t always need a clever, chin-stroking take. Sometimes it’s just about holding up a magnifying glass to how ridiculously these people act.
At one point, Swarbrick lectures other MPs on “joy as an act of resistance”. It summed up why punters had braved a cold school night to see our political leaders having the absolute piss taken out of them and their antics, be it through infighting in the caucus (in National’s case) or being too cautious to provide any real hope (AKA Labour). Laughter in the end times is a public service worth providing – and you have until September 5 to make the most of it at Circa Theatre.
