The Basement Theatre currently hosts two plays with different energies: one edgy, the other cosy.
It's easy to see why The First Time was highly commended in Playmarket's Playwrights b425 awards in 2016: Wellington-based playwright Courtney Rose Brown has a good ear for her generation's slangy self-consciousness and, in spite of a little heavy-handedness, the drama shows a thoughtful grasp on post-adolescent rawness, anxiety and finding oneself unemployed post-degree (Work and Income deliberately, unhelpfully entrenches shame). It's particularly enjoyable to hear about relationships (both same sex and opposite sex) midstream for a change — in drama, romance is usually just starting or ending.
The fresh cast of five young women is assured, credible and vivid, under the direction of Stef Fink, who uses stylised movement and split-focus in interesting ways to ensure the characters interact, even as they monologue.
In spite of the name, Conversations with Dead Relatives isn't morbid but rather a non-fictional two-hander featuring couple Alex Ellis and Phil Ormsby storytelling over cups of tea and trunks of photographs. The point is not that their ancestors are any more fascinating than anybody else's — although in a couple of cases, they certainly are — but that everybody's family has an interesting tale to tell.
In between stories of proto-suffragettes and Irishmen rescued by Maori princesses, the pair muse interestingly on heritage and responsibility: what advice would Ellis' ancestors give her about whether or not she should have a child? What taonga from our forebears should we keep? The 19th century relatives' commentary on the theatre is amusing and they don't always behave as their descendants would wish.
