Six monologues, some of which have to do with manhood, are directed by the prolific Kiwi playwright-come-director Thomas Sainsbury in K-Road’s up and coming tea-house theatre: Te Karanga Gallery.

The evening is very much about new writers, as its programme points out. These writers have never written for the theatre before, so someone thought monologues would be a good introduction to theatrical writing… however, it is incredibly difficult to sustain theatricality through live monologues – not to mention with non-professional or recent graduate actors – so it was a hard ask.

On top of that, Sainsbury gave the novice playwrights the challenging theme of ‘masculinity’ to play with. He tells us: “I decided rightly that it was a provocative theme for writers to ponder.” Well, since he decided “rightly”, who am I to argue?

Rightly or not, the eight writers gave this difficult genre and subject matter a go. The results are mixed. But two monologues stand out head, shoulders and pecks above the rest!

In terms of its witty, clever writing as well as its committed and magnetic performance, The Violence of Ngaire Chambers– written AND performed by Samuel Christopher – is the stand-out. Christopher’s unremitting portrayal of a murderous old lady who uses a gin-filled coffee cup in the retirement home is brilliant. His character, who insists, “I’m an Anglican, not an alcoholic,” is like Graham Norton dressed up for Halloween as Mrs. Doubtfire, spritzed in Jack Nicholson fragrance.

Christopher’s characterisation and physicality are unexpectedly satisfying. He’s watchable, witty and practiced. His script is nearly as good, with moments of hilarious granny racism. Of course, it has nothing to do with masculinity whatsoever… unless the fact that the actor is playing the opposite gender counts. Nonetheless, I’ll look forward to seeing Samuel’s name on programmes in the future – whether he is in any way relevant to the show or not.

The masculinity monologue which also goes to custard in all the right ways is Rattus Acklandicus, written by Philip Williams and performed very convincingly by Daniel Veint. Veint plays an Emo kid who works in a call centre. This piece plays with masculinity in a refreshing way – it’s completely understated in the piece, but absolutely fundamental to it.

The ‘Emo’ identity is played out for all its androgyneity, and its apathetic anarchism. Yes, that’s an oxymoron. Oxymorons are so like totally Emo (which is a bit like a suicidal Goth meets a bratty, vacuous American high school daddy’s girl). The Emo ‘look’ is trendy dark-coloured clothes, theatrical make up, self-harm scars and blinding bangs – it’s the same for boys and girls. They all mostly end up looking like abused Japanese Hentai characters, but who’s complaining?

If this is masculinity, then masculinity means something very different to what it meant before the era of Emo. Something tells me this isn’t masculinity though – instead, it’s a new generation of non masculine males. How exciting. Cudos to Veint for so obviously enjoying the performance (as does the audience), and to Williams for the script.

Sainsbury’s aim here was to put experimental new writing on stage, and these efforts are always welcome. However, I feel that the standard from one piece to the next was drastically different, and that some of the monologues were perhaps not quite ready to be performed. In my opinion, if Sainsbury had taken the three strongest monologues and expanded them further — taking the difficult directorial decision to cut the others — it would have taken the evening’s performance to another level. 
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