Flush at the Maidment Studio

By FRANCIS TILL

First on the boards in 1999 at the Silo, this new production of Flush at the intimate Maidment Studio is nearly ready for television production.

Author Kate McDermott's one-hour, one-act play - a bedroom farce set in a nightclub bathroom - casts a decade's worth of Shortland Street stars like egg whites into a pavlova. There's a little too much vinegar in the mix but, overall, the result is a light dessert, too short to stand alone at a major theatre venue.

McDermott, known for her writing work in television, mostly on Shortland Street, said she has rewritten the play to make it more realistic. It may be that, but realism is what distinguishes comedy from farce, and Flush would be better done as farce alone.

As comedy, it lacks structure at both ends and character development in the centre. As farce, it leans too heavily on epiphany.

As an hour, it's really just fine. That's because it is mostly farce and farce belongs to the actors.

In this case, the actors are all Shortland Street veterans. Most are also veterans of Xena and Hercules and a few have significant films (Snakeskin, Topless Women) on their CVs.

The director, Hamish Hector-Taylor (Xenan of Xena), is unique for not having a direct Shortland Street relationship.

The two leads, Katrina Devine as mousy Mary and Jodie Rimmer, brilliant as her cousin and alter-ego Natalie, play beautifully off one another, Rimmer to perfected type and Devine almost impossibly against.

Rimmer takes control of the stage, partly because it is impossible to disguise Devine's beauty: bank teller, clumsy, self-doubting Mary should possibly be cast a notch or two down, making the character less of a stretch. But Devine plays the role weak-chinned almost to the point of parody.

Mark Clare's "Drunk" was worthy of Peter Sellers. Clare's discovery about the secret inner truth of Lotto is one of the play's best-realised sketches.

What played like camera-oriented performances from Blair Strang and Rod Lousich slowed the pace.

And, adept as Jo Davison was at playing an avaricious mistress, it was only her Dunedin Blue Room tart, played for mischief more than lust, that showed up on the night as Sheryl.