What happens when award-winning Farmers Market meets award-winning theatre practitioner? A ‘fiasco’ is probably the last thing to expect, but there it is – the ‘F’ word in the title of this Alison Quigan concocted pantomimesque parable.

Ah, Feilding… ‘i-before-e-except-after-c’ – but never when you spell Feilding – a charming semi-rural Manawatū town with an Edwardian vibe and reputedly the largest stock saleyards in the Southern Hemisphere. There’s also a motor-racing circuit, but most likely Feilding is (according to the F-word script) “a place most Aucklanders have never heard of.”

Set before Christmas during Feilding’s famous weekly market, it begins pre-dawn beneath the iconic central Manchester Square clocktower. For market convenor Nicole, the day becomes increasingly fraught as it stutters toward a pending al fresco movie night. However, despite the noise and ammonia stench from passing stock trucks, a pair of hoonish harum-scarum sisters, a stampede of escaped sheep, an uncompromising market inspector, and a swarm of bees, love manages to eventuate. And all before the clock strikes midnight. Which it doesn’t. Strike that is.

Thirty-one years after helping pen and produce the legendary and trendsetting Five Go Balmy in Palmy, Alison Quigan returns again to the theatre where she spent 18 years as artistic director. Between 1994 and 2009, Quigan wrote and co-wrote 12 plays, usually for the final show season of the year.

Putting local people, personalities and places on stage proved incredibly popular. For a start, these plays were accessible. Not only were the places identifiable, situations and surroundings familiar, but so too were the characters, archetypes and cameos that inhabited them, and these eagerly anticipated home-grown excursions attracted a loyal following.

But they did more than simply pull in the punters. Their success inspired and encouraged other writers and practitioners to dramatise local stories, contributing significantly to the development of a distinctive Kiwi stage voice and style. They’ve left an influential legacy that continues to reward actors and audiences alike. Subsequently, several of these scripts have been reprised at Centrepoint as well as produced for various other professional and community theatres.

As Centrepoint juxtaposes its regular season against an extensive fundraising campaign to rebuild and upgrade the former workshop premises it has occupied since 1978, reverting to a proven and popular end-of-year format makes perfect box-office sense. That confidence has been reflected in advance booking interest.

On Sean Coyle’s adaptable single Manchester Square ‘sampled’ set with its suggestion of pergola-covered stalls, the play takes a time-honoured premise: two pairs of at-odds lovers dodging adverse circumstances in order to connect.

Kate Louise Elliott convinces as Nicole, the no-nonsense non-romantically inclined market facilitator who is increasingly stressed by the litany of unanticipated situations besetting this particular market.

While Christmas carries its own sad personal memories for Nicole, Ted, her ‘boyfriend’ played by Andrew Grainger, seems somewhat romantically compromised. Stewie her 2IC – a slightly subdued Kane Parsons – is distracted when Leona Revell’s sparkling Anihera, a Black Fern recovering from a shoulder injury, turns up as a stand-in stallholder.

There’s also running interference from other characters associated with the market. Quigan and Carrie Green add the ‘hoot’, brazenly presenting in a variety of costumed, wigged, bearded and moustachioed cartoon cameos. Aided by Nicola Smillie-Starling’s evocative costumery, these range from a couple of peggy square-knitting old ducks, to a glam karaoke sex-bomb. There’s also a draconian inspector of markets who’s untimely appearances are always accompanied by a dramatic otherworldly musical sting.

These over-the-top slapstick intrusions provide the piece with texture, innuendo and entertaining diversions as the four protagonists sort out their feelings for one another.

While there’s no shortage of creative ideas here – including a rampage of hand-puppet sheep, Fiasco didn’t quite gel on opening night. While it provided a fun experience, the play was still in search of its rhythm. There were missed opportunities for by-play and musical integration, occasional motivational misfires, some comedic timing issues, and the odd ‘Chekhov’s gun’.

Given the calibre of the cast, while this market mayhem was a near miss, but close enough for a mistletoe kiss, it will undoubtedly evolve and become more cohesive as the season progresses, while adding to Centrepoint’s impressive body of locally generated creativity.

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