Hymn at the Silo Theatre

By FRANCIS TILL

The second of three new New Zealand plays being produced at the Silo, Hymn is clearly still a work in progress, but shows real promise.

Hymn is apparently Nigel Waters' debut as a playwright, after a journeyman association with the University of Otago and Dunedin theatre scenes.

He has the language and behaviour of student flatmates down pat, which is just as well. Snappy execution by a very competent cast of Waters' often well-turned comedic lines in the first two-thirds of the play are all that save it from wandering off at times into mere autobiographic flab.

There is considerably more meander than march through the play's early stages, unfortunately, and much that eventually proves unnecessary, if cute.

The story, slow to appear, does so finally with considerable deftness, although it is a story so complex that Waters is forced to rely on straightforward narrative to tell it.

Dallas (Matt Dwyer) and Victor (Rod Lousich) are particularly close cousins with a shared history - and a dark secret, the engine of the work.

They both do a fine job of being students and neo-adolescents, but the action does not propel them toward any particular denouement. The one they arrive at is fine and satisfying, but it might have been almost any other.

Lousich shows some exceptionally fine transitions in and out of rage, hinting at an ability to take on truly multi-dimensional roles. And Dwyer has a kind of pasteurised James Dean quality that works to good effect.

There is also a female flatmate, Tui (Stayci Taylor), who seems woven deeply into the story at first, only to be revealed as a foil.

This is unfortunate, because her presence is sufficiently powerful early on to make her exit a distraction.

The finest moment of the play is, oddly, its last, when a musical metaphor that runs throughout the work is subtly vitalised, generating appreciation of what is still hidden in spite of all the explication that has gone before.