Married Millennials William Duignan and Andrew Paterson are of an age where they’ve started thinking about what might happen if their parents need to go into care. Duignan, a 35-year-old playwright and actor, watched his late grandmother become ill with Alzheimer’s. He grieved when his mother had to put her parents into a care home and dealt with further grief when they both died.
With this in mind, Duignan began writing his first full-length play, And the Lochburns, about five years ago. He shared the script with Paterson, who was his sounding board, and together they brainstormed ways to get it from the page to the stage.
A finalist in the 2022 Adam NZ Play Award, Duignan smiles about working with his husband on their first big creative project, if you don’t count their wedding in 2021, which was like a theatrical event in itself. Wellington’s old Public Trust Building was transformed for the “camp’' theme: think an 8x8m sparkling sequin banner and Met Gala-inspired costumes.
Paterson, a 34-year-old Wellington actor, is the play’s director. “Andrew’s been my in-house dramaturg for five years,” says Duignan. “We’re both trying to make a beautiful show. The thing I love about Andrew the most is that he doesn’t try to do my work for me. He has a very, very good brain for staging a drama and he’s got such a good way of saying, ‘Hey, I think maybe try this thing instead.’ It’s so nice.’’
And the Lochburns is a play with music, rather than a musical theatre work. The difference is important, says Duignan, who grew up in a musical family: he plays the ukulele, guitar and percussion, and sang in a church choir with his father in Christchurch. The Victoria University of Wellington master of scriptwriting graduate has taken that passion into his career, as he acts and writes for musical theatre. He co-wrote two works staged at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe Festival: Antonio, a queer-coded play about a Shakespeare character, and A Bit Too Much Hair, billed as a gender euphoric cabaret. He also frequently performs with Wellington-based Witch Musical Theatre.
And the Lochburns follows Gus Lochburn (played by Peter Hambleton), who has to go into a care home when his Alzheimer’s worsens. His three adult children in their 30s – played by Simon Leary, Hannah Kelly and Stella Reid – arrive at the family home for a weekend to pack up the house and his things. It’s a decent-sized cast, with Jthan Morgan starring as Leary’s character’s partner, Sam.
Duignan describes it as a memory play about a musical family who grew up singing together. Their father was a celebrated pianist, and their mother Margaret (played by Kali Kopae) was a lounge singer who sang jazz tunes and 1960s pop. Music bound them as a family as their mother sang show tunes around the house.
But what happens when the siblings grow up, their mother dies and they have to switch to worrying and caring for their father?
In the present day, the siblings return for a weekend to their home with its 1980s sunken living room decorated in burnt orange. They’re listening to the jazz and classical hits from their childhood, singing along to songs such as Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps, by Osvaldo Farrés, and Someone to Watch Over Me, by George Gershwin.
But the simple task of packing up their family home spirals into sibling rivalry and emotional angst.
“It reminds them of their life growing up, but their mother is no longer with them,” says Duignan. “The audience sees the frustrations and the elation that come with that process of taking those things that are familiar, packing them up and remembering all of the good and bad that comes along with every single object that’s going into that box.’’
The script shifts back and forth between the present day and the past; in some scenes, the children aren’t born and the audience watch the parents.
Music is a portal to the past, says Duignan, sparking the characters to remember their earlier lives and younger selves. “There are tears, but there’s also levity. Grief is a real thing, and music is really, for me, where that balance of love, lightness and yearning lives.’’
Music is often the last memory to go for a person with Alzheimer’s. Duignan gets emotional talking about his late grandmother and how she still responded to music and songs, even when she had no idea who they were. “It’s amazing to see the life come back into their eyes.’’
Paterson is interested in family dynamics. The youngest of three, he groans that when he returns to his family home, he immediately returns to his childhood self. He thinks others will relate to that theme.
It made sense for him to direct the play. For the past decade, Paterson has been acting and performing with theatre company A Slightly Isolated Dog, which often takes him out of Wellington.
“There are tears, but there’s also levity. Grief is a real thing, and music is really, for me, where that balance of love, lightness and yearning lives.’’
Duignan is also a set designer, whose day job is as an experiences designer at Wētā Workshop.
Paterson says the couple talk about the challenges of working together on a creative piece, where personal and professional boundaries can blur. “I’ll say, ‘Right, that’s enough, we’re done now.’ I think last night I almost turned his phone off. But there has been a car ride or two when we’re coming home from a party and we’ve finally solved a scene.’’
They also relate to the stress of packing up and moving on, as they’re preparing to move into their new home in Island Bay. Expect to see some of their packing boxes given new life on stage.
Duignan hopes the audience will see themselves and their own whānau in the work. “How family support us and how they irritate us and how you love them no matter what.
“And respect for those who are suffering from Alzheimer’s, of having a bit more empathy and a bit more care, and to think, ‘I’ve got Dad now and I want to value him as he is now.’”
And the Lochburns, Circa Theatre, Wellington, runs until November 2.
