The programme prescription by director Nicola Pauling perfectly describes this theatrical event. I can’t improve on it.

“3^rd Act is a year-long programme that supports older adults to explore performance and storytelling … and is used to develop confidence, creativity and connection … the cast] have found the courage to reveal parts of themselves, of their history, that they rarely share and certainly never in front of an audience.”  (They begin as strangers but gradually come to devise this commendably innovative show.)

I wondered how many Wellingtonians might be turning up to that one. In the event it was like queuing for a rugby test; and in BATS’ largest performing space. 3^rd Act’s fame clearly precedes it.

We have an ageing population. I should know, I’m well part of it (pushing 80) and the cast of seven (Waka Attewell, Fiona Campbell, Lesley Elvins, Pat Hutchison, Patrick McCarthy, Lynsey Ferrari and Anne Weinbrenner) seems to check in at around 75+. The hugely appreciative audience largely reflects that but with plenty of middle-aged whipper snappers in tow.

The staging is BATS’ minimal, i.e. with seven chairs across the stage that are moved by the actors as required. The cast carry their scripts to eliminate unnecessary ‘dries’ during the one-hour show.

That’s something the audience can adjust to too, very quickly. It’s entirely in keeping with the format. Older age is another country where they do things differently. The show is impressively comic in places but where ‘timing’ has more to do with the decade we’re examining rather than split-second delivery of lines. Even so the laughter hit rate is impressive.

The opening stanza consists of a sort of elderly ‘truth and reconciliation commission’. In it, the cast let it all hang out with punchily candid reminiscences of, say, painting skid marks on a family member’s newly laundered underwear. Or shouting highly inappropriate marriage proposals from the school bus. Each lands as surprisingly a well-thrown grenade. The Grey Power AGM this is not.

And so it goes; from lighting blackout to lighting blackout with some low-key music thrown in. Wondrous little vignettes like the re-enacted school sausage sizzle, where the suburban jungle drums randomly warn of a chappie “you don’t want to be alone with” – alongside “Do you want tomato sauce with that?”

There is a slightly Monty Python tinge to much of the side-splitting humour. I much appreciate a dramatic but meandering interlude where the classic phrase “you can’t handle the truth” is bandied around.  It is cleverly overworked to the point where nobody knows what truth is at issue and who can’t handle it. (Echoes of Pinter and Sartre there). Similarly, there’s a scene involving one of the ladies asking one of the guys to take a photo of her exposed left buttock. All in the cause, as it turns out, of improving the everyday performance of Wellington bus drivers. (As you do.)

Classic interpersonal setups are nicely handled. I love the one where the basic premise is that the elderly lady now needs her friends to prompt her on a debilitating personality trait. Friends go in one by one to take the bull by the horns. They are as effective as Nicola Willis controlling supermarkets or banks. It’s all evasive words until a braver associate scores a brutal bullseye. Spectacularly unperturbed, the downbeat response is, “That’s what my therapist said.”

Humour is only part of it, though. There are moments of clear-headed sincerity over, for instance, the lifetime family devastation occasioned by crass medical errors in the health system. You can hear a pin drop.

We also hear of a personal visit to an unlikely continent where today there is said to be much joy, togetherness and no destructive competition in the social fabric. Where assets are assessed as being “each other” rather than care-worn chattels: the empty trophies of our grim colonial past. There is no sense in this of ‘playing to the gallery’. Rather, it comes across as the heartfelt yearnings of our own off-the-street House of Lords.

When the cast finally lines up as group, I am taken with the impression it creates. They stand there in their chosen street clothes as a cohesive band of folk who have not been playing the parts of anyone but themselves. Yet no costume or art designer could have done it better. It is both warmly colourful and real. The audience are invited onstage to meet the cast and chew over anything they want to. Many do.

They tell me there are only ten seats left for the second show. However, there is an inexhaustible mine of memories and mature thought available to 3rd Act; assuming the next bunch of senior miners are willing. I hope to see oodles more of it. It’s robustly impressive stuff.  

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