Play 2.03 (ATC Second Unit) at Maidment Studio

By FRANCIS TILL

Play 2.03 is the Second Unit's second attempt at an experiment-rich production involving the tight interleaving of many private stories into a coherent whole. Last year's Play 2.0 succeeded admirably in capturing the Auckland club scene on a performance canvas and this year's effort is more successful and more ambitious.

The Second Unit's manifesto is the development of productions that will appeal to the young by setting aside moribund conventions while retaining a clear grasp of what "professional" theatre demands. As an uber-story involving maturation and the accrual of consequences in 14 or so young lives spread over at least four years, this lives admirably up to both goals. Each of the lives, which all touch one another, is beautifully etched, each has its own dramatic tension and each finds resolution, as does the play.

Credit for this sifts out among the entire cast and production crew (the play is billed as "a work of joint ownership") but devolves primarily on extraordinary writing by Jodie Molloy and Jacques Strauss, who grasp fully the motivational forces and idiosyncratic language structures that define the mini-generation about which they write in these productions, making the dramatic movement both authentic and unique.

Credit also goes to directors Oliver Driver and Colin Moy, not only for the flawless handling of so many fast-track changes of story and setting without losing forward momentum, but for the courage to introduce a new form of dramatic resolution, entropy, to the stage. This means that the experiment is not merely about new forms but also new ways of telling dramatic stories, making fresh and engaging demands on audiences.

The cast is also exemplary, each embracing characters both major and minor with the fit of fine-grain leather gloves.

Special effects and music play a large part in the lives portrayed on the stage with visuals and sound executed interestingly by KOG Transmissions and Mikey Havoc.

All up: a blast.