If you haven’t yet heard of Jack McGee, you haven’t been paying attention. Over the past two years, Theatreview has reviewed: Music Sounds Better Out Here, Long Ride Home, Sandwich Artist co-written with Phoebe Caldeiro, Boys and Girls at the School Silent Disco and ‘Evening Sour’ co-written with Emilie Hope, his contribution to the quartet of short plays, Compromise, in the current NZ Fringe.

I’m surprised we’ve been asked to review a rehearsed play reading of Edit the Sad Parts. While I am aware it was highly commended at the 2024 Playmarket Playwrights b4 25 Awards, I hadn’t realised – until I read Jack’s Writer’s Note – how many iterations it had gone through to arrive at this point.

Its first reading “took place over a year ago, late at night at the Little Andromeda bar in Ōtautahi” while Squash Co Art Collective were touring another show. A playwright friend read it and gave “Good feedback. Harsh. He didn’t like the ending. It changed a lot.” There was another reading here in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, then another (I think) in Tāmaki Makarau. “The new ending wasn’t working either.” Then Ken Duncum read it and offered a “gentle nudge”, Playmarket sponsored a development workshop – and “Now,” Jack notes, “we’re here.”

As we wait in Circa Two for the reading to begin, I contemplate the title. Surely it doesn’t mean ‘edit out’ the sad parts. Everything is relative, right? Any thing can only achieve distinction in relation to all the not-that-thing around it. I needn’t have worried. Of the many meanings offered in the many online dictionaries, this from Merriam Webster sort of fits: (transitive verb) to alter, adapt, or refine especially to bring about conformity to a standard or to suit a particular purpose.

The question is, conform to what or whose standard; to suit whose purpose? Well, the writer’s of course. But when you ask for feedback, or get it anyway … This is the minefield we’re stepping into.

Edit the Sad Parts is extraordinarily ingenious. The excitement I feel as it reveals itself reminds me of my first encounters with Tom Stoppard plays – but comparisons are odious. Jack McGee’s creative soul is unique. It demolishes the proposition that playwrights don’t have anything of substance to write about until they are in their 30s. Described in the blurb as “art imitates life imitates art”, this play offers a deep dive into how a creative process can intersects with real life to the extent that cause and effect become indistinguishable.

The premise is that Debi (Aimée Sullivan) has been invited to contribute to an anthology of short stories about a relationship breakup. She and Keith (Jamie Cain) are first encountered in bed together, late at night. She is wired with what turns out to be this festering idea for a story. She’s at the intuitive stage and needs to get up and work by letting it flow.

In a delicately-pitched scene at a breakfast table, Theresa (Emma Katene) tells Montgomery (Dryw McArthur) how their breakup is going to play out. He is heading overseas. Simultaneously, at the same table, Debi works at her laptop. Spoiler alert, because it’s a delightful surprise to realise it (but how can I say any more without revealing it?): Theresa and Montgomery are the fictional couple Debi is creating in her story.

The dialogue is insightful, edgy and poignant – and exquisitely realised by all four actors. Cadence, timing and non-verbal reactions are all on point. The tone is set for a bitter-sweet dramady that will surely engage anyone with a heart. And then a whole new dimension emerges …

As Debi invents the Theresa and Montgomery story, we – and Keith – can’t help but wonder to what degree her creative impulse echoes the state of her relationship with Keith. Or might it be vice versa, not least because the well-meaning Keith becomes more and more involved in its development. Did she ask or did he offer? The chicken/egg question is always there.

The script’s timeline follows the route Debi and the well-meaning Keith take in developing the story, so the backstory of how Theresa and Montgomery first became an item, for example, is enacted long after we’ve first met them on the brink of their breakup.

Keith opines things like. “There are no wrong turns.” Debi defends a passage with, “It’s the kind of thing said by emotionally unavailable men trying to get women to sleep with them.” Poetry and songs are considered in the quest for the most effective way of getting to the ‘truth’; to the heart of it – and here, director Lia Kelly adds to the soundscape.

Given Keith has slept and Debi has worked through the night, she leaves him to do a copy edit. I won’t reveal any more except to say Keith’s uninvited imagination takes it in a whole new direction that gives rise to some wonderfully absurdist performances and imagery. As the promo blurb puts it: “the pair disappear down a rabbit hole of hot swimmers, gospel choirs, and questionable communication.”

I imagine Edit the Sad Parts will resonate in different ways for each audience member. The nature or primary relationship and their demise will capture many. Creatives may see it as a cautionary tale about the dangers of inviting feedback and/or collaboration – although we have to suppose McGee has benefited from it, unless this ending is his response to the critiques he’s had about earlier versions.

It may just be a dramatic manifestation of a post-breakup brain – or does it represent a state of being that makes the breakup inevitable? Chicken/egg. Self-fulfilling prophesy?  

However you respond, I guarantee it won’t be passively. I can’t wait to see this in full production.  

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