It wasn't meant to go like this. When Auckland Theatre Company first announced their Back on the Boards festival, the country seemed to have passed the worst of Covid-19 and they were just one of several companies planning their long-awaited return to the stage.
Fast forward three months and while they've raised the curtains at the Waterfront Theatre, the zoned areas and separated audiences were not what they had planned. Yet ATC proved they could innovate on the fly after staging The Seagull via Zoom during level 4, so it's no surprise they have adapted to our new-new normal, with a festival more socially distanced than expected but all the more welcome after such a long time away.
To ease back into the swing of things, ATC returns with a double billing of two-handers that could provide a blueprint for other companies in how to stage shows again in a turbulent environment.
Playwright Stanley Makuew's debut Black Lover suffered a truncated premiere season in March, and ATC has made a wise choice to resurrect it six months later. It opens with Cameron Rhodes' Kiwi expat Sir Garfield Todd under house arrest in 1985 Rhodesia, cut off from the country he once served as Prime Minister due to his 'radical' views on equality. Enter his chef Steady - marvellously realised by Simbarashe Matshe – who is trying to survive in a bitterly divided country.
While not originally envisioned to be staged during a pandemic, Black Lover still shows how seamless theatre can be in this time. The two characters rarely leave the stage, locked together for 75 minutes as they explore the tensions and friendship with their master-servant relationship. It's gripping to watch the two play off each other, director Roy Ward taking Makuew's tightly wound script and delivering a perfectly coordinated dance as Rhodes and Matshe move deftly between the complicated intricacies of their characters.
