Solovivor
Circus Bar 17b Allen Street, Wellington
14/02/2025 - 15/02/2025
Production Details
Ralph Hilaga – Producer and performer
JP Luscombe – Director
In Solovivor, comedian Ralph Hilaga takes on the ultimate improv challenge: a solo Survivor experience with no script, no cast, just his instincts and audience-fuelled characters. Every moment is riskier than the last as he jumps between alliances, rivalries, and blindsides – all on his own. It’s an exciting, unpredictable one-man saga where the stakes – and the laughs – are dangerously high.
Solovivor is Ralph’s love-letter to reality-TV. After many failed auditions, this is the closest he’ll ever get to competing in the real show.
Show dates: 8pm Friday Feb 14 and 8pm Saturday Feb 15.
Venue: Circus Bar, 17b Allen St, Te Aro
Tickets: $22
Booking via fringe website: https://tickets.fringe.co.nz/event/446:6094/
Part of the NZ Fringe Festival 2025.
About the Artist
Ralph is an improv, stand up and sketch comedian based in Wellington. Previously a dramatic actor, he transitioned into comedy five years ago and has since trained at the iO theatre in Chicago, The Improv Conspiracy in Melbourne, and Basejump Comedy in Wellington, where he also teaches. He has performed and produced experimental improv and sketch comedy with various groups locally and internationally – such as “Catfish Trifecta”, “Wet Soup”, “Muunboot”, and the chaotic comedy duo “Mo and Ralph”.
Improv , Theatre , Solo ,
50 minutes
Energetic mayhem – deserves a larger audience
Review by Margaret Austin 15th Feb 2025
Solovivor at the Circus Bar is a one-man improvised show. Ralph Hilage is already here, generating an enviable amount of energy amongst early arrivers. I succumb to the offer of free popcorn and ponder on what this performance may bring. It’s a take on the American TV Reality show Sole Survivor, the title held by the winner of that show. The award goes to the castaway who has best embodied the game’s three-word slogan: “Outwit, Outplay, Outlast”.
Our castaway’s entrance is heralded by foreboding music and sounds of the plane that has dropped him off on the South Pacific island he is to survive on, alongside two other finalists. “Alongside” may be a misnomer for the relationships that develop in such a competitive situation. It’s known as social dynamics in the original. But a million dollars prize money is at stake, so is this an excuse for the behaviour that ensues?
Hilage is a self-confessed fan of the reality show he is parodying. That he once auditioned for it but failed to make the grade is both astonishing and the reason for his over-the-top characterisations of the other two competitors and his outrageous ideas for the three luxury items he has been gifted via audience suggestion. What will he make of nail polish, a valet and a dildo (albeit minus a battery)?
It is energetic mayhem, all contrived to fulfil the requirements of the game’s slogan. If social and strategic goals are met, what about the survival one? And we get the most graphic scene of the evening as stage manager Lydia Sainsbury sets up a table with delicacies of chicken feet, squid and scorpion for consumption by our intrepid competitor.
Technical input in the form of video clips and music enhance Hilage’s energy and inventiveness. He deserves a larger audience – one that would match the avid viewers of his namesake show. After all, he’s a solovivor.
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