Review: Foxton Little Theatre's Lent needs more rising agent

Mr Edwards (Bernard Long), Mrs Blake (Carolyn Allan), Paul Blake (Navah Chapman), Matey (Carl Terry) and Mrs Edwards (Lynne Long) in Foxton Little Theatre's production of Lent. Photo / Supplied

Lent
Written by Michael Wilcox
Directed by Carl Terry
Foxton Little Theatre
Until August 21
Reviewed by Damian Thorne

Opening night coincides with my birthday and the stupendous occasion is easily escaped by travelling the 32km to Foxton. Travelling has become the thing one must do to see a play written by an international author, performed by a theatre society with ambition on display just by the titles they choose to stage.

I would much rather watch a well-written play by a proven overseas entity than something by a New Zealand author past their best, or one who isn't necessarily a good writer but who gets performed to fill some sort of invisible quota.

Lent, the very British semi-autobiographical play by Michael Wilcox, gets off to a poor start by seating the reviewer at the back of the theatre, adjacent to the fire exit, and then literally an Olympic-style false start, as the cast hiccups the first scene and basically decides to, wisely, start over.

Staged by director Carl Terry on an awkward split set-up, with a tab (curtain) taking out half the Foxton stage's depth, there are moments I worry for a particular actor, as a door, which could have easily opened outward, swings precariously inward nearly knocking her from her seat. From my seat I cannot see stage left, and the set is not left open for us to look at during the interval.

Thirteen-year-old Paul Blake has been left at the preparatory school he owns and inhabits over the 1956 Easter break with his grandmother and three members of staff. While the play eludes to Paul's painful yet exciting journey to adolescence, nothing much actually happens, Paul never really seems pained, or excited.

With an assured performance by Navah Chapman, carrying the play on his shoulders, and largely pulling it off, the play really comes alive in his scenes with director Terry, playing the embattled Latin master Mr "Matey" Maitland. I admire Chapman for taking on such a large part, holding his own with only adult actors, seemingly understanding the humour in his role, and for allowing me to hear every word, with awesome diction to boot.

Directed very much like the puppet show Paul discusses throughout the piece, we see a Geppetto-type character pulling the strings, in Carolyn Allan's Mrs Blake, along with her characters in Maitland, and Mr and Mrs Edwards (Bernard Long and Lynne Long), seemingly only existing because she allows them to.

Long's Mrs Edwards is played like a Disney villain and I spend the play excited I might see her accompanied by a pen of Dalmatians, or that a house may indeed fly in and land on her head – but alas the character is left over-played and uninteresting. While the audience giggles as Long spits her lines across the stage the character would have benefited from being less maniacal and more menacing, with simple light and darkness more at the forefront.

More of a melodrama than the content may have wished it to be, Foxton's production is ambitious in origin, but not in delivery, finishing very much on a flat note, having me wondering if it should have been called Shrove Tuesday, rather then Lent.