A little bit of rain can’t dampen the fun. It’s the last of the nine performances of ROADKILL:The Uber-cool Musical at the Taranaki Reimagine Arts Festival 2025 and the afternoon is overcast and drizzling.

Director, creator, producer, musician and sole cast member Tom Knowles informs us that every performance of ROADKILL that he has put on in New Plymouth at this Festival has been in the rain. Cheekily referring to another of the Festival shows, as he dashes from the front of the van to the back or hangs out the sliding door, he assures us that this is not his first rodeo.

So, eight of us, who hardly know one another, squeeze into Knowles’ white Toyota van. We quickly forget the weather as we soon have other things on our minds. Nearly everyone in the group admits they really have no idea what they are getting into. There is a sense of slight unease amongst us.

Dressed in walk shorts, white shirt and wearing a headset-microphone, Knowles comically looks the part of a driver and tourist guide. He introduces himself as his persona Terry, a Taxi and Uber driver. He puts us at ease immediately, telling us we are in for the ride of our life. He is sure we will have so much fun. After all, we are going places we have never been before.

He is soon guiding us through how his hi-tech van works. Someone is given the remote to control the flashing, coloured disco lights which flicker all around us. We receive instructions on how the small cooling fans work around the van. No wonder this is ‘the uber-cool musical’. We focus our eyes on a couple of working TV screens with weird footage appearing on them.

Much later we are given outrageous props to manage and microphones to use. More surprises come when we find ourselves sitting in thick smog from a smoke machine and handling ROADKILL merchandise. Terry proudly informs us that all these bells and whistles are thanks to Jaycar and Temu.

Then we are off! For the next fifty minutes we don’t actually move at all from where the van is parked outside the TSB Showplace. Knowles has us interacting, exclaiming and singing. We join in with songs we recognise as old time favourites. They are intermingled with many crazy, but witty songs, Knowles has written himself that we don’t know at all. There is karaoke or should that be CAR-A-OKE? We are on show ourselves as we become the focus of interest for many walking by. They try vainly to peer inside the van to see what is happening.

Our singing is initially hesitant, but we are encouraged by comments from our now best friend and confidante, Terry. He graciously quips that we have “nailed it”, or “you’re  killing it” and describes our performances as “show stopping”.

In reality we are now too busy interacting with the story of Terry meeting his wife Mary and the tragic death of Mary’s father to have too many inhibitions. Virtual strangers we may be, but we are all in this together. We eavesdrop in on Terry’s phone call to Mary. We oooh and ahh as Terry, who hasn’t been home for weeks because of all the driving he is doing, declares his love.

Before long we are wearing some absurd gear to reenact an important day in Terry and Mary’s life. One passenger gives a remarkably great rendition of a death scene. Extraordinary props appear, to give us a hand or two.

It is certainly a very crazy ride. It really is ridiculously silly, but we embrace it and delight in it. We are frequently reminded by Terry that it is just life on the road.

As the outrageous experience draws to a close, many loose ends begin to tie up – and we discover surprising things about our friendly driver Terry’s past and present status.

He reminds us that life may be a highway. We have certainly driven a route the likes of which none of us have experienced before. With all the audience participation required it could well have been a highway to hell! Fortunately Knowles has the clever knack of making everyone feel right at home in the madcap world of his van. You just end up wanting to join in the mayhem. It is certainly one hell of a ride indeed!

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There’s something inherently dramatic about an Uber ride—the hesitant “Hi there, are you here for…?”6, the uneasy intimacy of sharing confined space, the pieces of yourself surrendered to awkward silence, and the ever-cathartic drop-off. Winner of the Most Innovative Piece award at the 2025 NZ Fringe Festival, Roadkill: An Uber Cool Musical takes this everyday experience and transforms it into something theatrical, ridiculous, and deeply entertaining. Conversations with the driver veer between the deeply personal and the absurdly mundane, turning a routine trip into a ride you won’t want to end.

From the moment you arrive, creator and performer Tom Knowles establishes an atmosphere of playful repartee. As Terry, your Uber driver and host, he exudes an effortless naturalism—so much so that it’s easy to forget he’s playing a character. His voice is big, filling the tight space with an energy that immediately livens up the area. Instead, he seamlessly navigates the tiny venue – his van – with a massive charisma. Knowles skilfully weaves details about the audience into the show. Before we even step inside the van, he’s already memorised names, asked about our day, and built a sense of camaraderie that makes us feel like willing participants rather than passive spectators. Just nine of us, packed in snugly, forced into immediate, slightly awkward closeness with our seat neighbours.

This is no ordinary Uber. It’s a Temu-fied party van, decked out with audience-controlled LED lighting, a fog machine, and karaoke screens begging us to sing along. The result is a space that feels both intensely familiar and completely surreal—equal parts road trip, interactive theatre, and fever dream. Through his music, Terry lets us into his world—his job, his dreams, his frustrations, and his enduring, almost obsessive love for his wife, Mary. The songs range from a sincere, heartfelt ballad about his devotion to Mary to an absurdly dramatic number about his dead father-in-law. The show thrives on this balance between sincerity and ridiculousness—every tender moment is undercut with humour, every joke laced with a strange kind of pathos.

Visually, Roadkill leans into its own absurdity. Stock footage plays on the karaoke screens, providing a hilariously low-budget yet strangely effective form of world-building. One moment, we’re watching generic wedding visuals, the next, a vague montage of pastoral landscapes. The DIY aesthetic—LED strips, smoke machines, and the undeniable reality that we are, in fact, just sitting in a parked car—adds to the immersive weirdness of it all. The contrast between the slickness of traditional musical theatre and the raw, makeshift quality of the production makes the experience feel strangely liminal, as if we’ve stepped into a space that exists somewhere between performance and reality.

At its core, Roadkill is a heartfelt musical about a man who just really, really loves his wife. But beyond that, it’s a celebration of the beauty in the banal—the poetry of small talk, the drama of an everyday conversation, the weird, transient intimacy of a car ride with a stranger. 

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