Reviewed by Jodi Yeats

A Chinese newspaper printing warehouse is artfully enhanced to convey the audience into the messy computer-chip factory setting of Gagarin Way.

Reviewed by Jodi Yeats

A Chinese newspaper printing warehouse is artfully enhanced to convey the audience into the messy computer-chip factory setting of Gagarin Way.

Eddie (Kevin Keys) is an edgy, psychopathic factory worker who relishes violence. The play starts with him discussing politics with a young colleague, Tom (Emmett Skilton), who thinks he is earning some extra money stealing some computer chips from their employers.

Eddie’s inept partner in crime turns up with a hostage. He was supposed to be kidnapping a Japanese businessman in an act of protest against capitalism and globalisation, but has grabbed the wrong guy – an English businessman, Frank (Edward Newborn).

Frank’s lack of shock or fear at finding himself held hostage when he comes to was a little hard to credit, but he did convey a world-weary attitude where he didn’t seem to care to much about his immanent death.

Written by Gregory Burke, the play is set in his home town of Dunfirmline in Fife and is a personal exploration of his own generation’s political apathy in contrast with the passionate politics of previous generations in that region.

In a neighbouring coalmining town, the miners were fervently unionist and embraced communism to the extent they named a road after the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

The four characters represent different political positions and I found the play a little too cerebral for my tastes. It became more real when one of the kidnappers, Gary (Will Wallace) started making connections with the hostage, realising their fathers were both miners in the same town and probably knew each other.

The play’s programme makes the point that in 1983 there were 170 working mines in Britain, of which, thanks to Thatcherism, six remain, with devastating effects on many such small towns.

The connection between the businessman and the disillusioned factory worker raises questions about the inept kidnappers black and white ideas about capitalism in a human way.

This is a very well directed, acted and staged play that sizzles with great lines and dark humour. When young Tom, extremely well acted by Skilton, accidentally gets involved the two kidnappers decide he will be useful to test their political ideas on, like a one-person focus group. Unfortunately he doesn’t believe in their ideas of socialism versus capitalism but maintains there can be a middle way (New Labour’s Third Way).

For my tastes, the play went on a journey of exploring politics without reaching a satisfactory position, but that is a quibble with the script and not with this enjoyable rendition of it. Certainly the script gave me some good laughs.

Written by Gregory Burke and directed by Gareth Reeves

Gagarin Way Garage
181 Hobson Street
To Saturday 11 December at 8pm
Tickets $25 adult or $20 concession
Book via eventfinder.co.nz