Experience the Joys of Motor Camping at Circa

Circa is offering a no risk opportunity for the uninitiated to experience the joys of a motor camp holiday, and as it wont require annual leave, takes one hour and fifty minutes of your valuable time and no special gear is needed, here’s your chance.

The play The Motor Camp begins as the Redmond family park their caravan. They are in the homemaking phase, unpacking and setting up camp. From the neighbouring site come unbidden nosey interest and helpful suggestions. The Redmonds are forced into instant neighbourly friendship with people they wouldn’t know at home. This is just the way it works in motor camps.

Professor Redmond, her would be academic husband and their lovely young daughter Holly have pretensions and the vocabulary to go with them. On the next site, in their faces, and too close for middle class comfort is the Hislop/Tairua family. And wouldn’t you know it, they have a cool brooding teenaged son who turns out to be just the thing for our Holly.

The campsite set has two real caravans with real awnings, authentic tables and cooking gear, and fancy coloured plastic glasses for the cocktails. The action is all there, on site. In the background is a lovely view over the sand dunes down to the beach. The set works well and the old familiar caravans and stuff of the kiwi camper are what make it work.

In the manner of a bedroom farce there is much slamming of caravan doors, and rocking sexual innuendo but no actual philandering except for one brief bizarre pairing off. It all ends happily ever after although there were some moments when resolution didn’t seem possible.

These World Premieres we get at Circa are entertaining and deservedly put bums on seats. Our playwrights are onto something, we love a jolly romp spiked up with local references and some spicy humour. We recognise and revel in a view of ourselves as, egalitarian, outdoorsy, socially aware, classless, and righteously disapproving of blatant racism.

The Dutch camp commandant’s fusspot announcements on the loud speaker and parental rages at the teenagers amuse us. We go away feeling pleased and secure without having been shamed at the dark parts of our culture. When Jude Redmond tells Mike Hislop that whacking his stepson is illegal, his irreverent response is hilarious and we are off the hook. This glancing acknowledgement of something rotten in the state of Kiwi was the topic of an exchange overheard in the crush on the way out, but we could manage more. Unreasonable fathers flying off the handle and soppy appeasing mothers are our clichés and might have produced arguments on the way home but this is not a play that disturbs complacency. It wasn’t even clear what Frank Redmond’s beef about phonetics was.

But this is the play it is and of its popular kind it is well done. There are mix ups in the social order. There is lively wit, racy naughtiness and rude bits. The six family members are played with verve and sunny summertime warmth. In particular Holly played by newcomer Florence Mulheron daughter of director Danny Mulheron is a little gem. She was a star and when the smart cheek written for her ran out, as it occasionally did, her face said it all.

ENDS

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