Carpe Jugulum

Carpe Jugulum is a play adapted from the Terry Pratchett novel of the same name. It was being performed by the Wellington Repertory Theatre at the Gryphon Theatre.

Dinner first. We met up at Annam, a new-ish Vietnamese restaurant that was formerly Arbitrageur. The dining room has been redecorated in an oriental style, and there is a list of cocktails which evoke the Vietnamese style, in particular their use of coffee and tea as ingredients. I tried a lemon ice tea martini, which contained Earl Grey tea (although I couldn't taste any).

We ordered, sat back, and waited. And waited. After half an hour I asked the waitress what was going on. "It's just coming!" she said and, to be fair, our starters arrived a couple of minutes later. The chicken skewers were tasty, the salt & pepper squid less successful. Hot on the heels of the starters came the main course with barely a minute to breathe. The whole tarakihi was good, but it was a whole fish and eventually it defeated me. The beef salad, I'm told, was fairly average. Overall it was OK but I won't be in a hurry to return.

Then to Gryphon Theatre. This is a small theatre that hosts the Wellington Repertory Company, and Stagecraft (who produced The Cat's Meow last year).

So, how to dramatise Carpe Jugulum? One of the issues with this is that whilst there is a lot of humour in the book, this is mostly in the writing. Similar issues have dogged theatrical TV/film versions of other writers, notably Iain Banks and Douglas Adams. If you strip away the writing, what you're left with is a somewhat complicated, and quite dark, tale of magical and interspecies warfare. The play also presupposed at least some knowledge of the Discworld, and the characters who have appeared in previous books in the series.

With poorly-defined characters, some of whom were hamming it up whilst the others seemed to be playing it straight, a plot that wasn't well explained, and plot device that revolved around a woman with a split personality, most of it failed to work. The Igor limped and lisped his way around, Granny Weatherwax was played way too seriously, and the split personality of Agnes Nitt didn't really make sense either. I'm not sure how they could have done anything about it, either - perhaps they needed a narrator or similar to provide exposition, and work in some of the humour from the writing. As it was it fell short both as a comedy, and as a serious play, probably by trying to be too faithful to the book.

Overall a disappointing evening out, with an average dinner followed by substandard entertainment. Still, onwards and upwards! There's another show to see next week.