There hasn’t been much on at Circa recently to tempt us, but something kept popping up in my FB feed because I follow A Slightly Isolated Dog. It’s called Slay The Dragon Or Save The Dragon Or Neither, and ASID are producers of the show. We’ve been to some of their shows before, notably Jekyll And Hyde, and enjoyed them, so we thought we’d give it a go.
Due to our busy schedules these days, we had to arrive at BATS Theatre independently, Nicola in her Driving Miss Daisy car. Could we find anywhere to park? Could we buggery! I don’t know what was going on in town, but it seemed that the normally empty spaces along Oriental Parade and Wakefield Street were all full. Eventually I found a space, and arrived in the nick of time.
The show is written by, and stars, two New Zealanders of Chinese ancestry, and revolves around them exploring their family trees and history, relating back to a trip to China, and covers such things as filial duty, grief, and ceremonies and rites around death. Sounds grim! Actually it was quite funny, told by two self-confessed “not an actor”s, using various different methods to convey the strangeness of China from a Chinese New Zealander’s perspective (she didn’t like “Chinese” Chinese food, but yearned for “New Zealand” Chinese food instead). It wasn’t a play or conventional type of show, more of a documentary with added storytelling. Some of it was quite tightly scripted, as its use of repetition needed to be spot on.
Afterwards we went round the corner to Capitol, where I was able to get the Bluff oysters I’d been so deprived of a week ago.
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