His and hearse comedy show

Phil Ormsby (left) and Alex Ellis play Nev and his spectral wife Carol. Photo / Supplied

If writers write about what they know, it was only a matter of time before Phil Ormsby wrote a play about a road trip. Ormsby and fellow theatre practitioner Alex Ellis have spent much of the past four years chugging around New Zealand on a series of road trips which combined artistic ambition with a desire to see the country.

As the creators of Flaxworks Theatre Company, they've toured their productions Biscuit & Coffee and Murder by Chocolate from one end of the country to the other and, earlier this year, to the Melbourne International ComedyFestival. In total, they have done more than 150 performances at 50 different venues including small cafes, boutique cinemas and town halls.

During one long haul between venues, they started pretending to be two larger-than-life middle New Zealanders called Carol and Nev and got the idea for their third show.

Called Carol & Nev, it's about a couple on the great Kiwi Road Trip driving the family campervan down the North Island, crossing Cook Strait and on to a South Island bach for their only daughter's wedding. The odd thing is, Carol died in 1984 and appears to have returned to haunt Nev.

Rather than featuring multiple characters, the play focuses exclusively on Carol and Nev. And while it retains much of the surreal humour that characterised Flaxworks' previous shows, there is a more serious thread running through the comedy in that it examines recent New Zealand history.

It's no coincidence that Carol died in 1984 - the year the Lange Labour Government came to power and kicked off a series of reforms. Ormsby, 50, says these changed New Zealand's social, economic and cultural landscape without any real discussion or debate in wider society.

"I thought it was an interesting thing to explore - how someone, like Carol who died in 1984, would feel about events that have occurred since then," he says.

"I think there are a lot of people of my age who question how such huge changes took place and what got lost in the process. When you try to talk about it, you can be accused of wanting to live in the past but it's not so much that.

"I think before 1984 we had a set of values we measured success against and now it seems to be all about money and the economy ... for most things, the arts included."

But Carol & Nev is no didactic rant; that's not Ormsby's style. "We like to make things fun," he says.

Fun is what he and Ellis have been having since they took their first show, Biscuit & Coffee, on the road back in 2005. They've since given up their jobs, built up a loyal fan base and clocked up some serious successes which are reflected in Carol & Nev.

They were able to take several months off to write the script and can afford to work with a professional director, Anna Marbrook, and a creative team rather than doing it all themselves.

Says Ellis: "It's been really great to be able to concentrate on the writing and the performances, rather than having to think about whether the lighting is working and how the sound is going."

Performance

What: Carol & Nev
Where and when: The Basement, June 15-20