Almost a decade ago, Camping dazzled with four relative unknowns in a tiny venue. Now it returns, with an all-star cast on a bigger stage. Does it still deliver?
The original run of Camping, on stage at The Basement, is the funniest and most kinetically bizarre show I’ve seen in this country. The lineup now looks ridiculous – Kura Forrester, Chris Parker, Tom Sainsbury and Brynley Stent – but at the time they were just four young comics and actors, bursting with potential without knowing quite where that would take them.
At the 2016 Comedy Festival, Camping happened at 10pm in a packed room, baking hot, drenched in sweat and the audience was so close that it felt like we could catch a stray elbow (or worse). The premise of the show was simple – two couples arrive, double-booked at a motel. A storm forces them to hunker down together. Over one night all the repressions and frustrations in their sexualities are expressed through endless double entendres and unlimited camp, cranked up to 11.
Parker says they wanted to make something “culty and weird” like The Rocky Horror Picture Show – an insane ambition – but they really pulled it off. It was done with just 20 hours of rehearsal, riding the charisma and chemistry of the cast until it was red raw. It was a staggering creative achievement, and something which deserved vastly larger audiences than it got. It’s a smart choice from Silo to revive the show, eight years after its debut, now that every performer is some variety of household name.
At the same time, you approach with some trepidation. How much of it was fused into that moment? The venue, the low stakes and most of all, that white hot desire to show the world what you can be, before you really even know it yourself? With a big venue and a broader audience, can they still get there?
On entering Q Theatre there’s familiarity. The one location, once a rather rag-tag set, is now beautifully crafted with garish 1970s interiors. The walls are a bright teal, the curtains striped and a multi-media artwork with driftwood spelling out “lover’s cove” sits behind the bar. As soon as we begin, the revelation: this is Camping, but it’s not that Camping. It’s a full end-to-end rewrite – the same characters and setup dropped into the near future instead of the repressed Muldoon-era of the original play. In 2016 it was a taut hour, befitting its location smooshed into the Comedy Festival, but it needed expanding to work as a standalone Silo production. There’s now two hour-long acts, with a quick intermission.
Francis (Parker) and Connie (Stent) greet us, newlyweds driving to their honeymoon. Francis is wildly camp, deeply closeted and proud of planning his own wedding, horses and all. Connie is just extremely keen for him to finally fuck her. Meanwhile Les (Sainsbury) and Fleur (Forrester) are 25 years into their marriage and stuck in their ruts – Fleur is missing mainlining reality TV and trying to find the wifi password in the accomodation’s manditory Clearfile. Les dotes on her, waiting for approval which never comes.
I could continue listing various plot points, but why bother? Just as it was when it began, this is a show carried along by the four of them, being as lewd and lascivious as possible and cracking each other up, knowing they will have the audience destroyed the whole way through. There is nowhere to hide in a show like this – it’s all four of them, only four of them, and they’re on stage almost constantly. It works. It really, really works.
Forrester is electric as Fleur, her performance climaxing in a truly diabolical musical performance with a loop pedal and bejewelled trucker cap. Sainsbury has been playing beautifully observed New Zealand archetypes for years, and his taciturn-but-naive Les is weirdly subtle, not a word you associate with Camping in any other context. Stent’s Connie is a wide-eyed naif, a winter apple dressing as a spring onion, who Forrester opens up in every sense of the word.
Parker is the centre of every scene, so loud, so strange, with a really fucked up bowl cut while he hammers at the closet door. There’s this one deeply incongruous scene where he takes Les on a bike ride, mainly so they can say “booby” and “tit” (it kills), and his voice changes as he reveals himself to be a men’s rights activist. Truly, it makes no sense in the context of his character and feels like padding. But, it’s funny, it’s weird, and the world of Camping is so messy and silly that you just accept it.
The whole play is building tension for the iconic orgy scene, which is largely untouched according to my recollection, and still the most ecstatic, ridiculous, joyous event. It’s so pure, so funny, so stupid, and in this bleak year, where no one seems to be feeling any kind of good time, the pure escapism of the scene – and this play – feels like something we need as a city, a society, a community.
That was the end of it the first time around, but Camping 2024 wakes up for the morning after. They’re a bit fried, a bit sore, spent, but also… still quite horny. The scene is super funny, but also quite touching (not like that, or not just like that). You’re almost moved, watching these two couples process this and try and absorb their new realities. It’s the most successful of the new scenes, and a beautifully tender way to end what is otherwise a real jackhammer of a play.
This rendition of Camping doesn’t recreate what happened in that sweaty room in 2016. It gives something new and still extremely satisfying instead. It’s like seeing a band that once performed in tiny clubs move into arenas – a different season, with something lost, sure – but it’s replaced by a sense of being held by supremely confident performers who know exactly how to work together. Camping still feels completely out of step with culture, and that’s why this utter horndog of a show is essential.