Painfully hilarious reunion

By GREG DIXON

The unexpected arrival of old friends, well, it's not really something to be encouraged. Avoided at all cost would be more like it, particularly when there is, shall we say, history.

So it's no wonder that when old friends Reg and Isobel turn up unannounced at Colin and Elizabeth's poncy Martinborough wine estate, a knife could cut the frosty, frosty atmosphere - one of the daggers Elizabeth shoots at Reg might do.

This is a moment of acute discomfort. As they all stand in the lounge with the indoor-outdoor flow, they circle each other slowly - an invitation to sit down is inevitably an invitation to stay - and avoid prolonged eye contact while Elizabeth, a life-long snob, witters on about how well the family have done, to fill the conversational void.

Eventually, when it appears these old but not dear friends won't be leaving anytime soon, tea is offered.

"What sort would you like, Reg?" Elizabeth asks more or less through gritted teeth.

"Heineken," he grunts.

Oh God, you think, I can see where this is going - and that nothing has really changed since the disastrous dinner party at which last we saw these couples, in playwright Roger Hall's Middle Age Spread, written more than 25 years ago.

But as actors Paul Barrett (Colin), Elizabeth McRae (Elizabeth), Ray Henwood (Reg) and Christine Bartlett (Isobel) play out this uncomfortable, amusing new scene at the Auckland Theatre Company's Ponsonby rehearsal space, an irony occurs.

While these couples might happily have ended their lives without ever seeing each other again, audiences will undoubtedly find great pleasure in their return in Spreading Out, Hall's sequel to Middle Age Spread.

Certainly its premiere at Wellington's Circa Theatre earlier this year attracted more than just enthusiastic reviews.

"We played for eight weeks to 100 per cent," say Henwood, who also played Reg in the Circa production.

"That's absolutely rare, though not for Roger, I must admit. But you can't publicise a play to that effect. Why it worked for eight weeks is that people went out of the theatre and said [to friends] 'You've got to see this'."

Nostalgia is likely to have played its part too. And last year's successful revival of Middle Age Spread by the ATC will surely ensure that middle-aged Aucklanders will want to see how these characters have, well, aged.

When last we saw them, the couples spent that dreadful, painfully hilarious dinner party coming to terms with infidelity and, more importantly, the pregnancy of Colin and Elizabeth's teenage daughter to Reg and Isobel's teenage son.

As Spreading Out opens, Colin and Elizabeth are now pushing 70. They've long since moved from Wellington to the Wairarapa to grow grapes - poseur's pinot noir as you'd expect - on a lifestyle block which, thanks to the excesses of the real estate market, is now worth a small fortune.

However, their rural idyll is in for a battering over this particular New Year's break with the (expected) arrival of children and grandchildren and the untimely appearance of ex-neighbours Ray and Isobel, who have been living in Queensland in a motorhome for a decade.

You don't have to have seen Middle Age Spread to understand these latest family tensions or Reg's brutal one-liners, say Henwood and McRae. And curiously enough Hall did not set out to write a sequel to it.

He'd begun to write a play about people in their 60s adjusting to the limitations of advancing age and their disenchantment with their adult children and with the way the country is going.

"Then I realised the perfect characters already existed to illustrate the points I wanted to make," he says.

The result is a rather interesting piece of theatrical continuity, in that the playwright, the characters and the actors have all aged equally. McRae and Henwood are cast originals, he in the premiere Wellington production of Middle Age Spread she (as Isobel) in the first Auckland cast.

And, like the protagonists, here they are again.

"There is an awful lot in the play that has happened to us as well and other actors of our age will find that," Henwood says. "They may or may not have changed partners, they may or may not have had an affair that didn't get anywhere. We [as older actors] have the ability to bring that history, we've lived through that time as well.

"And that's a wonderful thing. It's the first time I've ever done that, come back to the same character that number of years, in real time, later."

McRae agrees: "You're playing close to yourself - really rather frighteningly. I certainly don't hold Elizabeth's political opinions, but she's uncomfortably close at times. It does bring out certain sides of one ... the bossy bit, for example, I do quite well in the area."

The strength of Hall's writing, as evinced by Middle Age Spread and its sequel, is that it involves real people - real New Zealanders - in real situations, Henwood says.

"It certainly is a funny play but there's an awful lot of reality in it. He writes the universal character within us. But when you look at the script on the page there is not necessarily a laugh. When we did the first rehearsal [in Wellington] before it had had any public performances we weren't ready for some of the laughs."

"They're not gags," adds McRae, "they're purely recognition."

Continues Henwood: "There are one or two funny lines which people do repeat to you afterwards because Roger has an ear for a good line. But in the main it's a documentary with laughs."

Hall has been routinely criticised by those of a more pretentious nature for writing middle-brow plays for the middle classes - and it seems likely that the updating of Middle Age Spread will only confirm what his detractors already believe.

Henwood, who also starred in the theatrical and TV versions of Hall's first play, Gliding On, gets reasonably hot about such views.

"Does that mean," he says, "that quite a significant section of society should never be portrayed? We could ignore it, which is strange attitude to take. Secondly, the implication is, very often, that what he does is easy. And I find that very strange too.

"He's an observer. He crafts it. Nobody else has done it and it's very interesting that middle class, middle brow controls the political direction of the country and nobody comments on it."

Says McRae: "He has got his finger on the pulse. It's so applicable. It is part satire, but it is also a sort of restoration comedy of manners - you're never quite sure what's mirror and what's satire."

I'm sure Colin and Elizabeth would love it. Unfortunately, Reg and Isobel have just arrived unexpectedly ...

Performance

* What: Spreading Out by Roger Hall

* Where: Sky City Theatre

* When: Opens Thursday, season runs until Saturday, June 19

* Tickets: $33 through Ticketek