Walking into Caterpillars and Butterflies already evoked memories before the lights went down. For me, the blue fabric draped from above to resemble a sky, the clouds on a string, the piano with a garden growing on its back, took me to children’s television. If you were to squint, you could imagine a bright-eyed host telling stories with hidden lessons, or that A is for Acorn and B is for Bear, and so on.

In a way, that’s not all too dissimilar from what master of ceremonies Jonathan Vanderhoorn gives you, but the real genius of his debut show is that within the whimsical framework of DIY sets, plinky pianos, and singalong guitar, the confessionals he imparts are those of a man in his early 30s still wrestling with his own place in the world, battered by the terrifying experience of simply being alive. It’s a show that is absolutely for adults, but one that shows how close we are to the fragility we’ve had since we were still earning our alphabet. Maybe even more.

It’s a music show, comprised primarily of songs Vanderhoorn has been working on in the past year, smartly arranged along a timeline from youth, to adulthood, to suddenly being responsible for the upbringing of another human being entirely. “Caterpillar,” a song that returns a few times throughout, glues the songs together thematically, but so do Vanderhoorn anecdotes which are, at times, completely disarming in their immediacy. I was brought to tears by Vanderhoorn’s story of a book of whale facts he owned as a child, his only memory of which being a small part of a rap from the book he remembered. I’ve rarely heard such a clear-eyed statement on how it feels to hold on to precious childhood memories by barely-there threads.

A testament to the intelligence of the writing here is in how easily the show slips between moods. Tamaki and Me comes as a complete tonal shift early in the show, a pure piece of observational comedy about the quirks of Auckland City, under the guise of a sweaty, machismo-laden groove. If you’ve ever hated yet loved Auckland so much that you kind of want to slap it and then kiss it 1950’s film-noir style, this has you covered.

Throughout, Vanderhoorn walks from his piano to his guitar, clearly confident in one more than the other, but there’s something beautiful about the loose guitar playing in contrast with the more assured piano work that creates magic at moments where it mightn’t have been intended in the first place. This all comes to a head when Vanderhoorn picks up the guitar and says “this is a song about failure.” Butterfly in the Fire is a mid-show peak that, for the first and only time in the show, pulls the tension taut. The conceit is that the song contains a note Vanderhoorn isn’t even sure he can hit. Hard to find a more emblematic moment in a show about vulnerability than the lone artist on the stage belting a triumphant cry at perfect pitch. He wanted to fail, apparently, but I found the happy ending extremely cathartic.

Shooting Star, the first of two emotional powerhouses that round out the show, was meant to be a song about nothing. What it endd up being, aided by a video montage of memories, is very much something. “Shooting star, slow down” is a scary representation of what life is – a headrush of moments that are literally impossible to slow down. You Don’t Need to Know finds something even more beautiful and scary than your own existence though, the little life you’re responsible for when you make the decision to have children. Suddenly, you, the barely shielded adult that still feels unable to process the world around you now must run defense for your bundle of joy. It’s a huge tearjerker, but earns every one of them through clever observation and playfulness that undercut any semblance of misery and replaces it with love and care.

Jonathan Vanderhoorn’s major talent lies in somehow combining poignancy with dry humour in a way that constantly throws you off-guard. Even in the most openly hilarious moments, such as the closing rap of whale facts referenced earlier (complete with a backing track), the emotional heft of a man rediscovering a book that meant enough to him to remember all those years later, is front and centre.

Caterpillars and Butterflies is a triumph for the simple reason that it knows precisely how to talk about the incomprehensible complexity of being alive, every brick that makes up who you are, and how they form the great person that is you. Many people will take different things away from it than myself, but I feel that’s kind of the point. A Rorschach for every single person who was built a different way.

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