Quarter Life Crisis

Another cheap Wednesday, another comedy night. This time it’s to the Cavern Club on Allen Street, there to see newcomer Louise Beuvink with her show, Quarter Life Crisis.

As is traditional, we went out for dinner first. This time we headed up to the 7^th floor of the Copthorne Hotel on Oriental Parade, to dine with views out over Wellington Harbour in their One 80 restaurant. Generally speaking, hotel restaurants are mediocre, but Wellington does boast a handful of decent ones: Hippopotamus at the Museum Hotel is the standout, but One 80 has always provided us with above-average fare, and we’ve been back a few times since I first sampled their Ostrich burger during Wellington On A Plate 2013. (Artisan would also join that list if they could get their wait staff to do some actual service.)

We walked back to the Cavern Club with a bit of time to spare, and grabbed ourselves seats near the back. Louise Beuvink came on stage, and immediately offered us directions to the toilets, as these are located…behind the stage. She then started telling us about her life. It probably comes as no surprise that she is 25 years old, and has made the heroic presumption that she will live to be 100. This, she admitted, was only because it gave the show a catchy title: 30% of the way to 83 doesn’t quite trip off the tongue so well.

One of her key messages was how she’d had to re-learn some of the things she’d been taught when younger. Her childhood ambition to be a Spice Girl having been thwarted (she read us the letter she sent to the Spice Girls, aged seven at the time), she gave us a short version of her life at various schools and how she ended up at Otago University. The “start again at a new school” story was particularly vivid, as she improved the School Ball experience for just about all present. She also confessed her fear of the noise made by plane toilets, then digressed on to the Mile High club, which provided quite a bit of amusement, as the only two audience members who would publicly admit to membership were gently coaxed to give a few more details:

Louise Beuvink: “Was it with your partner, or a random person?”

Mile High Club Member 1 (male): “Random”

MHCM2 (female): “Random”

LB: “Which airline?”

MHCM1: “Emirates”

MHCM2: “Yes, Emirates as well”

LB: “When was this?”

MHCM1: “Last April”

MHCM2: “Last April”

LB: “Where were you flying to?”

MHCM2: “Don’t say Dubai, don’t say Dubai”

Fortunately for her, it wasn’t Dubai.

Now, I don’t know how much of that was set up in advance, but it was pretty good.

Other highlights were telling us how she’d rejected various careers based on the advice of her father: “there’s no money in that.” Eventually she ended up at an advertising agency, and hated it. Setting herself free and becoming a stand-up comedian was another behaviour that she had had to re-learn.

The finale of the show was a long and winding tale about how she met her boyfriend, and how he puts up with her shit. Including, presumably, her telling the story of how he puts up with her shit. Now we all know. If you want to find out what kind of shit he has to put up with, go see this show!