Supported by:

When I saw Shifting at Te Whaea two years ago there were 6000 cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes on stage. There are a lot fewer on the smaller stage at Bats for this revival of what was originally part of Leo Gene Peters's master of theatre arts (in directing) run by Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School and the Film and Theatre Programme of Victoria University.

In this latest version, which has been revised and tightened, two characters have been deleted and two new ones added, and three of the original cast have been retained playing their original roles. What has not changed is the inventive direction that allows the actors to drive the stories forward with the same comic spirit that enlivened the first production.

The cardboard boxes are still turned into beds, wind machines, dancers in a gay bar, and numerous other things and places in the four or five stories that depict the constant changes we all have to face every day in the turmoil of the modern world.

As a programme note says 'Life, identity, sexuality, relationships: all these things are only ever fixed when they die.' Shifting explores all this through some linked, neatly written and warmly performed stories about a youngish dancer from California adapting to life in Wellington, a young man learning Spanish and having a fleeting love affair before heading off to Spain, a young woman shifting flats, and a scientist being nervously courted by a man who spends most of his time either in his empty flat in Aro Street or at a Winz office.

In my review of the first production I wrote that there seemed to be no necessity for Shifting to ever stop because there were neither climaxes nor resolutions to the stories. I was wrong because, of course, life can never be neatly and tidily wrapped up in a box. But then life can sometimes be unpleasant, but luckily in this amusing hour-long play that idea is kept at bay.