Critical Corner: Smashed and Hedy!

Every year, without fail, the Spiegeltent plays host to a variety show that runs throughout the Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival. Even as the annual programmes shift and sway in their blend of theatre, dance, music and visual arts, that one show is a constant. While the quality of these shows varies, they’re usually a guarantee of a good time. A bit of cabaret, a bit of circus, a few wines and a spectacle. It’s not high art, but not everything has to be.

This year’s version of that show is Smashed - The Nightcap and while it fits the bill in theory - a lineup variety show featuring performers from Australia and New Zealand, there’s something a bit lacking this year. Whether it’s the relative shortness of the show (75 minutes), the low energy of the MC Victoria Falconer (doing her best to work up a deeply sober crowd) or the lack of spectacle (two, maybe three, circus acts amongst the lineup), it just missed the mark.   

You have to have some sympathy. To open a “raunchy” (can anybody actually define what raunchy is?) variety show at 6.30pm on a Tuesday, when most people are barely an hour out of the office and not even halfway through the work week is brutal. There’s only so much energy an audience can give in daylight hours to this kind of show, even when the individual acts are often delightful, like Nomi Cohen’s singing quiz and Elektra Shock’s Britney/Megan Thee Stallion mash-up lipsync. There’s really nothing wrong with the individual performers, who are all doing their absolute best, with Eve Gordon’s aerial closer being a brief, dazzling glimpse of the kinds of shows that used to be in the tent.

Another growing staple of the festival seems to be the crowdpleasing solo show based on a real-life famous person. Last year, it was In The Name of the Son - The Gerry Conlon Story (about the man you expect it to be about, given the title). This year, it’s HEDY! The Life & Inventions of Hedy Lamarr (also about the person you expect it to be about, these shows are not misleadingly titled). 

This form is familiar and comfortable. Audiences go to maybe learn a bit more about something they know a little about, or to spend some time in the same space as a performer pretending to be a famous person. Familiar and comfortable does not, however, equate to exciting - or necessarily even good.

HEDY! unfortunately falls into many of the pitfalls that come with adapting a real person’s life into fiction. It is dramatically inert and often feels as though writer and performer Heather Massie is staging a Wikipedia page rather than a piece of drama. The double hooks of the show, Lamarr’s Hollywood life and her groundbreaking co-invention of the Frequency Hopping Spread, feel oddly divorced from each other. More often Lamarr than not, the character is commenting on her own life rather than living it. (The show also stops curiously short of some of the fascinating developments in her later life, which you can find… on her Wikipedia page.)

The thing that really sinks HEDY! Is that it never feels authentic to its namesake. Massie’s Hedy doesn’t talk about her scientific endeavours like a scientist would, she talks about them like a theatre person thinks a scientist would. While that is disappointing, more damning is that Hedy’s thoughts on her own career feel more modern than contemporary, putting the lens of modern feminism on a real life person who deserves a bit more complexity. The performer’s accent might be spot on, but this Hedy is more mouthpiece than character, more reference than recreation.

The main issue that unites both of these shows, unfortunately, is that there’s simply not a lot of show. Smashed feels slight in comparison to similar shows in years previous, while HEDY! resembles a Fringe show in every way other than its length. Call me greedy, but in an arts festival, I expect more than this.

Smashed - The Nightcap runs at the Spiegeltent until March 23. HEDY! The Life and Inventions of Hedy Lamarr Runs at Q Theatre until March 16.

Other Things I’ve Consumed

• I read Molly by Blake Butler this week and I can’t stop thinking about it. Butler writes on his relationship with his wife, and her suicide, with such complexity, tenderness and confrontation that I felt like I had to put the book down and pace to get through it. Not an easy read, but a profoundly moving one.
• I’ve been playing Suikoden I + II Remaster, which will mean nothing to most of you, but essentially imagine a piece of art that was formative to your life, that you assumed would be lost forever, suddenly being made available to you. It’s a great feeling!
• There’s a new Lontalius song out, which means the world is a little bit more beautiful.

Things to Read

• Loved this interview with Cynthia Ozick, an author I’d never heard of but who I’m now obsessed with.
• I’m still loving Metro’s Pot Luck newsletter, the best weekly guide on where and what to eat in Tāmaki.

Self-Promo

• If you’ve got a kid and want them to do cool performance-related things during the April holidays, can I recommend checking out the National Youth Drama School? A bunch of amazing people are teaching, and I am also teaching (playwriting!).

Writing and reporting takes time, and if you want to support the amount of time it takes (and ensure that the scant amount of meaningful coverage of local art can continue), please considering supporting Dramatic Pause with a paid subscription ($8 p/m, $60 p/a) and if you can't afford a paid subscription, please share the work with your networks!