On an unusually humid Dunedin evening, theatre-goers braved rowdy St. Patrick’s Day revellers to reach the tunnel-like New Athenaeum Theatre. The black box was brimming with a sold-out audience eager to watch award-winning actor Nick Tipa’s (Kāi Tahu) Babyface. With this solo play, Tipa offers a performance that can’t be missed—his enraptured audience teetering between uproarious laughter and breathless awe at his many comedic and athletic feats.

Tipa is a tour de force, flinging—literally flinging—his body through space at terminal velocity as he summons small-town Aotearoa and a memorable cast of characters, including the play’s protagonist, ten-year-old Kahu and his alter ego, wrestling superstar Whiplash. The production boasts a full team: written and performed by Tipa, directed by Sara Georgie, and dramaturged by Bronwyn Wallace—with music and sound design by Zac Nicholls, stage management, props, and set by Sofian Scott, lighting design by Quinn Hardie, photography by Katy Lockwood, and videography by Ashley Heydon.

Tipa’s acrobatics can only be described as astonishing: gymnastic tumbling meets Chaplin slapstick. The production begins with Tipa wrestling himself, launching his body across the (thankfully padded) stage as he embodies dueling wrestling champions. These wrestling scenes, interspersed throughout the one-hour performance, recall the electrifying experience of watching professional wrestling or circus arts: we know we are watching a staged performance, but we fear bodily for the performer nevertheless.

According to its description, the play “asks what it means to belong to a place, and questions the truth behind the kayfabe.” Kayfabe refers to “the tacit agreement between professional wrestlers and their fans to pretend that overtly staged wrestling events, stories, characters, etc., are genuine.” It’s no surprise, then, that professional wrestling provides fertile ground for theatre and performance theorists eager to explore theatricality and the well-trodden dimensions of the performed “real” in non-traditional settings. With this concept of kayfabe, Tipa’s script enjoys countless opportunities to experiment with metatheatrical devices and frames; principally, how can kayfabe’s metatheatricality emerge in the more traditionally theatrical performance space? 

This line of inquiry might benefit this one-man show’s many transformations of character and space. Tipa is quicksilver, vocally and physically shifting between the performance’s cast of characters instantaneously, but even the most virtuosic performer—Tipa surely among them—would struggle to keep up with these metamorphoses. Sara Georgie and the technical team do an admirable job reinforcing these transitions. Scott’s set design is particularly evocative, with a few key props masterfully transforming to meet the needs of each scene and lending credence to the play’s themes.

However, the audience could benefit from more signposts to mark the shifts between characters, locations, times, and scenes. Something as simple as additional props, costumes, or projected scene titles could achieve this effect. Despite Tipa’s best efforts, there are occasional continuity errors where characters seem to shift positions on stage accidentally, and the rapid pace of these transformations sometimes makes the world of the play difficult to visualize.

The synthesis between the play’s two components, Kahu’s experience in a new town and the imagined cast of wrestlers, reaches its zenith when it intersects with the play’s emotional core: Kahu’s parents’ dissolving marriage. The script might benefit from more of these moments of synthesis. If, as the production description states, the play “asks what it means to belong to a place,” then how does wrestling offer Kahu belonging? The answer seems to exist beneath the text’s surface, waiting for future iterations of this project to bring it forward.

It must be emphasized just how funny this play is. With a packed Fringe schedule, prospective audiences won’t regret spending an evening with Tipa and his kaleidoscopic, vertiginous world of big-time wrestling and small-town Aotearoa. However, since the remaining performances are sold out, theatre-goers will have to wait for the next time Tipa stages this production. This script doubtless has a long life ahead of it.

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