What a heap of rubbish! The set, I mean. Wow! Who knows where production designers Meg Rollandi and Rose Kirkup – and their interns, presumably – went to source the random components of the metallic, plastic and cardboard mountain that greets us on entry to Circa One, en route to our allocated and physically distanced seats. A car crushing yard looks like one possibility … 

I see it as a metaphor for the detritus of past political regimes that the current incumbents and future aspirants must navigate and hopefully rise above as they aspire to high office on the forthcoming, if somewhat delayed, elections. It seems as if the acting space will be a mere strip of floor in front of it all until the cast scuttles out from covert portals, like rats on the hunt, across the invisible platforms they are destined to scheme, posture and pronounce upon.

But first a collegial song and dance: ‘MMP, Here We Go Again’ – splendidly choreographed by Sacha Copland to sound design and composition by Oliver Devlin. Helen Todd’s lighting design is brilliant too, enhanced especially with overhead strips of Nitro led lights dynamically employed.

It’s clear the quality of this 18^th iteration of the Public Service Announcement (PSA) political satires – launched by The No Fefe Collective in election year 2011 at BATS Theatre – has risen several levels. Back then the sense of panic and manic energy left me wondering whether the show was over-written, under-rehearsed or both. Of course it has got better over the years, with a range of writers at the helm.

This year, Thom Adams (the longest-serving writer), Jamie McCaskill and Anya Tate-Manning have written a brilliant script. And while the fun of quick changes of wigs and coloured ties or jackets remains, to denote different characters, going into the Circa Theatre production with an actual budget and focused rehearsal period has paid off big time, with assured performances astutely calibrated by director Gavin Rutherford.

It’s worth noting that Jacinda had a minor but memorable role in that May 2011 premiere. “Even those who don’t know who Jacinda Ardern is, “I wrote, “(she’s Labour’s youngest list member, standing for Auckland Central this year) will get a vivid impression from Anya Tate-Manning’s bright, smiley and ruthless characterisation.” By the eighth PSA show, in May 2017, PSA Election Day show, Jacinda (Tate-Manning again) had become deputy PM to Andrew Little – then, opening less than two weeks before the actual election, PSA Stranger Politics featured a Queenly Heather O’Carroll as the new Labour leader in a Game of Thrones-inspired embodiment of ‘The Jacinda Effect’. In PSA A New Dawn (May 2018) Tate-Manning’s Jacinda was heavily pregnant and by November that year, at Circa Two, in PSA The Ghost of Christmas Parties, she was portrayed as saintly in public and formidable behind closed doors.  

Hannah Kelly assumed the mantle of formidable Jacinda, empowered by her ‘Political Capital’, in PSA Indignity War (back at BATS, May 2019) and now her world-renowned Jacinda is commanding the stage at Circa One. Feared and revered by all, she wears golden gloves and is cursed with making everything she touches turn great. The only quality that eludes her is being Māori …

Her constantly appreciative Labour cabinet ministers are Kelvin Davis, Grant Robertson and Kris Faafoi, wittily captured by Matu Ngaropo, Simon Leary and Sepelini Mua’au respectively, if not respectfully. (Unfortunately Labour’s visibly busiest frontline ministers, Chris Hipkins and Megan Woods, miss the cut this time round.)  

Mua’au also pops out of a tipped-over wheelie bin like a horizontal Jack-in-the-box as the ACT Party’s Freedom-extolling David Seymour. Also, with a disconcerting white wig, Mua’au rolls out Gerry Brownlee. But the truly shrewd operators of the National Party are Chris Bishop and Nicola Willis, wickedly manifested with all due malevolence by Leary and Kelly.

Well-remembered in past PSA shows as Paula Bennett (who has now left the building), Johanna Cosgrove reincarnates as the new leader of the National Party: a mesmerisingly vengeful Judith Collins, throwing lightning bolts at all who try to cross her. In a very different persona, Cosgrove also plays the Greens’ Chloe Swarbrick, who is subjected to a very strange experience …

Leary is encumbered by a bad grey wig as bong-toting Greens co-leader James Shaw (not a valid way to lampoon him, in my opinion), while Neenah Dekkers-Reihana brings impressive mana and focus as his co-leading counterpart Marama Davidson. In a remarkable transformation, Dekkers-Reihana also manifests a hunched and gravel-voiced Shane Jones.

Which brings us to NZ First. Hannah Kelly reprises her Tracey Martin, in competition with Shane Jones to become the successor of Winston Peters, suavely played as a fading éminence grise by Matu Ngaropo. But Winston has other ideas … Spoilers must be averted but I will say one of my favourite scenes is where Winston tests the Kiwiness of Chloe – extremely funny in both content and execution. And that is just the beginning of an increasingly bizarre plotline.  

Meanwhile the Greens face the dilemma of who to court as prospective coalition partners, which serves as another major plot-driver generating some very funny interactions.

Still on the outer despite his climb up the polls, David Seymour gets his moment with Sepelini Mua’au’s delicious reprise of ‘I am the Very Model of a Kiwi Libertarian’ (from May 2017). For the politically alert there are droll references to the Clutha Southland seat and Fletcher Tabuteau. And on election night the quest for power becomes very real when someone shorts a circuit – giving rise to an extremely clever verbal exchange in darkness.

Of course Jacinda and Judith have to face off at some point and the moment comes when Judith jabs with a name that hits Jacinda where kindness goes awol – or does it? The list she recites of what she would rather do than go into coalition with ACT is less than unkind, she claims. As for Judith, she has a vulnerable point too, which her airy dismissal of swamps does not alleviate, given the allergy one has produced.

The vexed question of how to form a government under MMP at a time when Māori sovereignty, our relationship with the tarnished British crown and the desire some have for Aotearoa New Zealand to become a republic brings the show to a head.

The six skilled actors who have filled the stage with 15 characters divest themselves of wigs and ties as they sign off with a beautifully sung ‘Hope for a Generation’ (by Fat Freddy’s Drop) which segues into Kora’s ‘Politician’.

In these testing times, PSA: Election 2020 brings welcome satirical levity to the coming weeks’ inevitable political wrangling. Let’s hope we return to COVID-19 Alert Level One in time for it to earn the packed houses it deserves.

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