KEY POINTS:
With its endearing, quintessentially Kiwi characters, wry humour and sharp observations, Roger Hall's latest comedy delivers all the elements that have made him New Zealand's most bankable playwright.
But these familiar pleasures are served with something quite unexpected - a brutally frank account of the business of providing care for the elderly.
In Hall's bleak vision, the twilight years are nasty, brutish and painfully prolonged.
The play throws up a succession of deeply disturbing images as the residents of the Regina rest home come to terms with abandonment and face physical degeneration while depending on the care of strangers.
In one particularly haunting scene a malicious night nurse seems to find sadistic pleasure in humiliating an Alzheimer's patient and taunting a helpless stroke victim.
Under such circumstances it comes as no surprise to hear the characters plaintively calling for the release of death.
It is an unlikely setting for Hall's bubbly brand of light-hearted comedy but the play provides ample evidence that comedy and tragedy are natural partners and demonstrates how laughter can be our best defence against the afflictions of a cruel world.
Roger Hall has complained loudly that people tend to neglect the serious aspects of his work and Who Wants to be 100 shows he is a trenchant and clear-sighted critic of social ills.
The play offers a hard-hitting commentary on the state of institutional care for the elderly, while touching on the broader issue of how economic and social pressures have eroded the capacity of families to care for their own.
Unfortunately it relies on a rather formulaic structure.
The narrative unfolds in a series of naturalistic scenes that are interspersed with monologues in which a handful of protagonists gradually reveal their life stories.
It is a formula Hall has used many times before, and while it showcases his talent for assembling finely crafted anecdotes and presenting well-drawn characters it seemed ill-suited for the intense, complex scenarios that are canvassed in this play.
The problem is exemplified by a moving episode in which an estranged daughter visits her disabled father with the sole purpose of getting her hands on the family inheritance. This tightly scripted vignette is full of pathos, conflict and humour but the dramatic potential of the situation is whisked aside as the play struggles to cope with the unrelated storylines of the other characters.
However the play does deliver a series of well-timed jolts that come from the skilful juxtaposing of humour and misery, such as when a rather tired joke about incontinence suddenly becomes a reality and we are forced to confront the decidedly unfunny procedures for dealing with this condition.
Such rapid-fire changes in tone make enormous demands on the actors and the play benefits from the finely honed skills of some of New Zealand's most accomplished actors.
Raymond Hawthorne employs a wonderfully expressive range of groans in his depiction of a stroke victim who has lost the power of speech, and George Henare brilliantly evokes the anguished bewilderment of an Alzheimer's sufferer.
Mark Hadlow is immediately engaging in his highly animated portrayal of hard case ex-All Black who frequently brings the house down with expletive-laden tirades against his fellow inmates.
