New Zealand theatre maestro Roger Hall serves up his latest wicked slice of life in Dunedin tomorrow.
Four Flat Whites in Italy opens at the Fortune Theatre tomorrow night after a tickertape of rave reviews around the country.
It is a sign of Hall's enduring popularity that nearly half the seats have already sold for the month-long Dunedin season.
As usual, he places recognisable, everyday characters in hilarious, not-so-everyday situations.
Comic pathos delivered with a cat-o'-nine-tails.
"I seem to have the knack of picking topics that most theatre-going audiences can relate to and recognise," Hall says in an interview this week.
"And people really do enjoy laughing. In relation to this play, I have had so much feedback from people. No-one ever comments on the serious part of the play. They say: 'We laughed and laughed'."
A twist of fate sees retired librarians Adrian and Alison on a culture holiday in Italy with their new neighbours, Harry and Judy.
And so begins the holiday from hell.
The locations are as expansive as the characters, who traipse around exotic sites such as Venice, St Peter's Basilica, the Guggenheim Art Gallery and the Coliseum.
Four Flat Whites was "just one of those ideas that was floating around", Hall says.
"It was a good idea, in that so many people do travel these days and are often surprised how stressful it can be.
"Travelling with your nearest and dearest can have its stresses, but these seem to be compounded when travelling with other people. Especially those you don't know very well.
"New Zealanders travel differently from people from the northern hemisphere, who pop over to Venice or Paris. For New Zealanders, this is an epic journey.
"A once-in-a-lifetime experience which they tend to undertake more intensely."
Hall flirts devilishly with subjects including marriage, work, politics and education, giving old saws a cutting edge.
"Any marriage is more interesting than any murder," he says.
"Ted Willis, a writer for TV Drama in the UK in the 1950s, said this.
"The ways humans get along - or not get along - is fascinating with all its subtle variations. People all experience it.
"Whereas relatively few experience murder - even though sometimes they'd like to - which is why, in any murder, police always look at the family first.
"One's own relationships and other people's - what makes them tick or not tick - is a never-ending fund of interest. Relationships are what this play - all the plays - are about."
Hall was born in Woodford Wells, Essex, England, in 1939, shortly before the onset of World War 2 and after University College School, in Hampstead, he followed his father into the insurance business.
In 1958, aged 19, he sailed to New Zealand on an assisted passage scheme for migrants.
He trained at Wellington Teachers College and later taught at Berhampore School, Wellington, where he began writing his first plays in the mid-1960s.
"I can't remember any particular moment or occasion that set me off. My parents were fairly astute observers of the human condition. And my father could always tell a good story against himself," he muses.
Then an old school friend asked him to co-write the 1969 television sketch show In View of the Circumstances, which won a Feltex Award for best programme.
But his theatrical career really took off in 1976 with Glide Time.
The play about a group of dysfunctional public servants became one of the biggest hits in New Zealand theatre history and, in 1981, was turned into the equally-successful television series Gliding On, which spent five years on New Zealand screens.
Hall moved to Dunedin in 1977, to take up the University of Otago Burns Fellowship, where he began forging his reputation as New Zealand's most successful playwright.
He discovered the Midas touch, penning hits such as Spreading Out, By Degrees, Love off the Shelf, Market Forces, The Book Club, Take a Chance on Me, Footrot Flats last year's Who wants to be 100? and his most successful play to date, Middle Age Spread, which ran for 18 months in London's West End and won the 1978 Laurence Olivier Comedy of the Year Award.
He has also contributed to children's theatre; writing pantomimes, radio dramas, books and plays for children and founding the children's television watch-dog, Monitor.
In Dunedin he joined the Fortune Theatre board, served on the New Zealand Literary Fund, and laid the foundations for Dunedin's annual New Zealand Writers Week.
Hall was awarded a QSO for his services to theatre in 1987 and made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2003.
He remained at Otago University teaching drama until 1994, when he left Dunedin for [cough] Auckland.
But he retains many fond memories of Dunedin and the Fortune.
"There have been many very fine productions at the Fortune over the years. But, perhaps, the most fun occasion was during the run of Footrot Flats, the stage musical, when the audience was invited to attend one night dressed as Footrot characters," he recalls.
"The auditorium was jammed with Wals and Cheeky Hobsons, Dogs and Cecil the Rams and Aunt Dollies. Everybody there that night loved it; whether they were on stage or off.
"Maybe the Fortune should do more dress-up evenings from time to time . . ."
See it
- our Flat Whites in Italy opens at the Fortune Theatre tomorrow night and runs until December 12.
- Sessions are at 7.30pm from Wednesday to Saturday, 4pm on Sundays and 6pm on Tuesdays.
- The play features Stuart Devenie, Vivienne Aitken, Simon O'Connor, Julie Edwards, Rachel More and Allan Henry, and is directed by Lisa Warrington.
