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The Body Politic
Although it’s essentially a modern, metropolitan, melodrama, The Body Politic at Wellington’s Circa Theatre has both much wider and narrower ramifications.
Stemming from an intergenerational Body Corporate dispute after a young Pacifica lawyer moves in, four neighbours each learn about and admit to their shadowy pasts as they discover the Director has been amassing power by amending the body Corporate rules fro decades. A metaphor for Aotearoa and the Treaty of Waitangi? How about for the whole world?
This is an amusing, well-constructed, bare-bones production that leaves all kinds of interesting questions floating like political jetsam in its wake. It achieves the difficult task of simultaneously ripping holes in our assumptions and seamlessly weaving the threads back together.
Director and Designer Andrew Foster cleverly stages Elspeth Sandys’ intelligent script and Fetu Chris Alosio stands out among a cast of thespian stalwarts, including Will Peter Hambleton, Clarice Jude Gibson, and Miriam Lauren Gibson. Anne-Lise Noordover and Tom Smith’s set design is beautifully sparse and described as a ‘production installation,’ a title it fully deserves as a work of art in itself.
Howard Davis
Scoop Arts Editor
Educated at Cambridge and UCLA; worked on several major Hollywood feature films and as a Kundalini Yoga instructor in Los Angeles; currently enjoying life in Wellington.
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