Maidment Theatre
April 27-May 5 | Reviewed by Imogen Neale

THERE’s an ad currently running on the quasi-national radio station George FM. Two hapless guys are looking for something to do and end up at Burgundy’s with the cabaret queen Debbie Dorday. Like a broken, but very enthusiastic record, Debbie keeps greeting the boys with “See you at Burgandy’s!” When they try and tell her that they’re actually already at Burgandy’s, Debbie just repeats “See you at Burgandy’s!”

Part Stepford Wives and part Pinter the advertisement would slip perfectly into the script of Caustic – a new work from the gifted young director and playwright, Thomas Sainsbury.

Set in ‘Coca-Town’, a 1950’s gone futuristic dystopia, Caustic explores a world where life depends on consumerism. Literally: if the folk of Coca-Town (yes, you can see why Stage 2 is worried about litigation) are found to be consuming anything other than Coke they are tasered – either to death or temporarily immobilised so that when they wake up they can be put to work in a hard labour camp.

To police people’s consumption habits there are Coca-Cops on every corner and the ruler of Coca-Town (resplendent in his red Coke-styled CEO badge) has two henchmen with a knack for sniffing out dissenters. Plus, like The Stepford Wives, family and friends can’t be relied upon to keep non-Coke consumerism quiet.

But despite the strictly enforced rules and regulations there are dissenters in Coca-Town – Loni (who loses her husband Chuck to a rotten stomach) and Randy (her husband’s cousin who arrives in town just as Chuck dies). Loni, however, is a very reluctant dissenter: she rejects all the last breath anti-Coca-Town insight her husband presses upon her, convincing herself he must be going mad. And Randy, whose favourite sayings are “I can’t” and “I don’t know” is a accidental dissenter. Indeed, he likes the idea of change but really can’t see how he can do anything to make change happen.

Nonetheless, over a Coca-coffee at a truck-stop Loni and Randy plot their first revolutionary moves and from here Caustic becomes an action come sci-fi-cum-romance adventure.

The play could have been a light but very entertaining jaunt down familiar end-of-the world love-will-save-you path. Given all the garish red and white costumes, stage props and lighting it certainly had the potential to be a somewhat bawdy Americana piss-take.

However, the play is imbued with a very tangible frustration – what do you do if the world is clearly absurd but you can’t find a way to change it? What do you do if you know the things you live through – food, lifestyle, political systems, social norms – are all poisonous? You can’t very well simply create a new way of living. Well, perhaps you can and that’s why so many North Islanders are packing up and moving to the South Island...

To explore these themes successfully Tom almost had to lift it out of the everyday – people find it a little too confrontational when their lives are put on stage and hacked apart in front of them - and the stage, in all its red and whiteness let him do this.

Tom has also assembled a very strong, enthusiastic and versatile cast of actors. They lend the performance a sense of hope and energy – exactly what people need if they aspire to disrupt the system. As a cast they hold together brilliantly – so much so that it’s hard to pick one or two out as shining about the rest. While this may disappoint the actors it is a blessing for the audience – at no point do you curse the fact there is a bad apple or two amongst an otherwise tight cast.

This is the second staging of Caustic – a much shorter and more actor-thin version was workshopped as part of the University of Auckland’s Drama Studio in January. And while it certainly benefits from having its themes and scenes fleshed out there are one or two scenes that could be half the length and have twice the impact. It’s not enough to halt the play in its steps but they do create a snag that disrupts the pace and urgency of the play.

Caustic achieves what many plays do not: it leaves you with lingering questions that bother you for hours after the curtain drops. It also, curiously enough, makes you feel that things can happen – which, given the ending, is rather surprising.