A couple of classics

ROSA SHIELS

It's difficult to remember a time when David McPhail wasn't entertaining television and theatre audiences. Now he's teaming up with fellow stage veteran Dame Kate Harcourt for a laugh.

Auntie and Me, a comic-drama by British playwright Morris Panych brings together onstage for the first time, two of New Zealand most distinguished thespians.

David McPhail, ONZM and QSM, is well known as a television comedian (McPhail and Gadsby and  Letter to Blanchy among many) and theatre actor, with multiple stage and television writing, directing and producing credentials. He is also a professional speaker, debater, print columnist and has written two books with Jon Gadsby and AK Grant.

Dame Kate, DNZM and JP, is one of a small handful of theatre matriarchs in this country. Her own work (and arts patronage), which has inspired generations of actors, began back in the 1960s, with a pre-school radio programme called Listen With Mother. Since then she has been a familiar voice and face on radio, TV, stage and screen.
 
“I’ve known and admired her work, but I’d never worked with her,” David says.
 
The intense touring production – four and sometimes six performances a week for almost all of August, from Whangarei down to Gore – is a big call, particularly, one would imagine, for octogenarian Dame Kate.

“Kate’s over 80, but you would not know it by looking at her or talking to her,” he says.

They have, however, built regular breaks into the tour schedule to relieve some of the pressure.

“We’ve eased it off a bit in consideration of her. It’s not so much the volume of work, it’s the travelling that’s tiring.”

The production of Auntie and Me resulted from a working relationship David established last year with independent producer Ben McDonald.

“He approached and asked had I considered touring the Blanchy play that Jon Gadsby and I had written, called Stir Crazy.”

He hadn’t but he did, and they toured this production through the country. The touring circuit drawn up and tested, this led to putting on a dinner show twice a year and the ensuing New Zealand tour of Grumpy Old Women.

"We’ve established a circuit for a particular type of play, which concentrates on the smaller centres,’’ McPhail says.

He and McDonald are now constantly on the lookout for plays that fit into the touring context, with fewer than four or five actors and a simple and mobile set. Auntie and Me – which McDonald ``found’’ --  fit the bill perfectly.

Of the play, David McPhail says, ``It is very funny but it’s also very dark’’. The Auntie of the title, an old woman, has sent for her nephew, whom she hasn’t seen for 35 years, because she’s dying. The drama ensues from their scratchy relationship.

``She says she’s dying, dying, dying and he says things like, `Let’s stop all this morbid talk, shall we? Do you want to be cremated or not?’

``Kate’s very humorous, very funny, and it’s going to be an interesting process because for a large portion of the beginning of the play, she doesn’t speak. She’s just sitting in bed knitting and looking at me. When we came to do the photographs she was putting on some delightful faces.’’

The nephew softens in attitude toward his aunt over the course of the play and there are some major surprises which ensue.

``It takes part over a period of about nine months and he makes a number of discoveries, and I won’t spoil anyone’s enjoyment by telling what they are. But he makes one amazing discovery and then another discovery that really throws him off-course, and other than that, he comes to like this woman who he didn’t think he ever would, and he has all sorts of plans for them.’’

David McPhail has plenty of plans of his own. He is back in a writing partnership with long-time friend and associate Jon Gadsby, with whom he has written three plays and some dinner-theatre works, and some time after August Random will be releasing his own story.

``They’re describing it as a memoir. It’s sort of biographical. Obviously it’s about my upbringing and how I got into what I’m doing, but it’s not, if you like, a definitive autobiography,’’ he says.

And don’t bother looking in its pages for a salacious expose of the colourful underworld of theatre and television in New Zealand.

``There are things that have happened to me that I’m perfectly happy to relate, but I’m not going to say, `And then the door opened and she walked in …’  There’s none of that.’’

Auntie and Me: Saturday 28 August, James Hay Theatre. Tickets available through Ticketek, which has information on the other South Island shows.