Real estate agents should stay away from this play

Last Legs
by Roger Hall, directed by Colin McColl
Auckland Theatre Company
ASB Waterfront Theatre to September 30, Hamilton October 5-7, Tauranga 13-16

If you’re a real estate agent, you won’t want to see this play – it takes a mean swing at your sort.

On the other hand, if you’re from the generation that knows the words to Mack the Knife (1959), you may love this Roger Hall comedy. Maybe not so much the younger baby boomers and younger generations (especially the dreaded millennials).

Except that – if you’re a Green – you too may give this work a big tick.

Hall is New Zealand’s best-loved playwright because of the way he mocks this country’s silliness; his audience, his generation, loves it.

Consider how delighted Kiwis were by Glidetime, Middle Age Spread and many more. Hall wrote plays that reflected exactly how his audiences were living. I remember, for example, when my father halfheartedly complained that Hall was mocking men who wore walk shorts and long socks to work and we fell about laughing – because it was true. He mocked members of his own generation and they got the joke.

Some of Hall’s work has had a sharper edge – I am a particular fan of his farming plays – but his stock in trade has been the comedies, some more black than others.

I was a bit puzzled when I heard Hall, now in his seventies, had written a third play about old people in a rest home. In fact, in publicity for this play, he has jokingly promised to stop mining old people from now on and is writing instead next time about con artists.

Last Legs places a group of disparate pakeha Kiwis in an upmarket retirement village cum rest home on Auckland’s North Shore, big enough to have a new wing added – with plans for an official opening by Prime Minister Bill English.

The play is several years old but has been refreshed by up-to-date humour featuring Hall’s trademark one-liners, which I won’t spoil by repeating – but which are spot on.

Because of that, the play takes on an Auckland-centric and political edge, which is perfect timing just before the election.

Added to that, a distinct moral tone imposed on one character led me to wonder if Roger Hall votes Green.

Checker board set
Last Legs opens oddly, with each character by turn introducing themselves to the audience. All are wearing face microphones a la modern rockstar, which puzzled me – was it to ensure good sound for the largely whitehaired (and maybe deafer) audience or to project older actors’ voices (they didn’t appear to need it)?

They were presented on a clever set by Rachael Walker in subdued colours but in checker board type patterns that connected both to upmarket apartment living and to relentless game playing by the old folks in the assisted living area. The costuming by Debbie Thearle was cleverly inspired by retro 1950s references and the 1970s pink outfits worn back then by brave men.

The plot moved around new arrivals and the residents’ committee, which runs a happy hour featuring chateau cardboard to the horror of new residents and run to the financial benefit of the chairman. That alternated with game-playing scenes (bridge, mah jong etc) by assisted living residents (played by the same actors in wigs and dressing gowns) that did not add to the story.  I can’t avoid saying this: We seemed to be laughing at the disabled and I felt most uncomfortable watching it.

Two of the characters are former real estate agents who give the industry a bad name – they wear matching pink outfits and are bubbly and enthusiastic in a sales full-on approach. As Garry, Mark Hadlow used the sales mantra of repeating important information three times to hideous and brilliant effect – his acting was wonderfully wriggly and his descent into sadness on being caught out again moving. As his wife, Trish (Louise Wallace) turned her character into a tragic figure, hitting the gym to keep a perfect figure to keep her failed third marriage at bay.

Catherine Wilkin as Kitty, the village sexpot, created a sensual but kind character who had had an acting career but whose retirement apartment had been paid for by a lover – in return for her favours.

Margaret-Mary Hollins as Helena had her strong mean moments, revealing she had been a student who seduced her older lecturer, which landed her a husband and cost him his first marriage but her character subsided into a keen painter who ignored her elderly husband’s activities. That husband, Angus (Ray Henwood), at first appeared pallid, quiet, unsteady on his cane but on discovering an old lover – Kitty – cheered up and later ran across the stage like an eager rabbit to her rooms – to the delight of his audience.

Making the point
The final character was Edna, a flinty retired teacher and Green activist played by Alison Guigan, forced by cancer and burglaries to seek a more secure place to live. Edna worries whether her activism has been pointless and about the meaning of a Green life – she is by far the most serious character and, oddly, seemed to be making some sort of moral point for the playwright.

Late in the piece, the committee is organising the grand opening of the new wing by the prime minister when fog stops the PM’s plane from landing, several residents die ( or don't) and Edna decides on one last act of life-redeeming activism in protest while a hearse blocks the driveway.

There are plenty of laughs in this play but it may need some modernising for the next generation. There is a poignant moment, for example when Edna asks Kitty wistfully what it’s like being a love bomb and what her techniques are. But we never get to hear them because I suspect Hall’s generation would consider this rude. The next generations would laugh at the details.

Retirement village and rest homes usually have large numbers of managers and staff – mainly Pacific Island and immigrant caregivers – I was surprised by their absence. 

When Garry reveals he had to give up driving his beloved restored classic car and move into the village because he had macular degeneration, this is a little outdated because there have been marvellous medical advances that now halt the disease and delay blindness (not to mention the horrific injections in the eye that do this – surely grist to the humour mill).

And there is an odd story by Angus (a retired professor) on American academic fundraising and how Kiwi academics aren’t on a pay level where they can make large donations to their alma mater. I’m not sure this is relevant to this generation whose American reference these days is Donald Trump.