Time passes faster than fleeting fame

 Gulf News, 24 August 2006

Mark James as Heslop

And from there on, everything else seems to have fallen wonderfully into place. We're talking about The Fifteenth Minute, an absorbing piece of uniquely Waihekean Theatre, on at the Morra Hall this weekend.

I was there for opening night last week at the Rocky Bay Hall, and haven't stopped talking about it since. Commuters within earshot on the ferry have by now heard all about it - except for the pivotal twists in the story. So now they'll just have to go and see it.

The Fifteenth Minute is written by Alan Knight, a man already well known on the island for all the right reasons. Brewer of the fine beer, singer-songwriter, raconteur, writer of sardonic letters to the ed, and thespian - he seems to be a man of extraordinary energy. So I give thanks to an extended spell he had in the cold and distant fens of Southland last year, where he had time to hone the rich and witty script that has become The Fifteenth Minute.

And it must have taken some focus, for the conceit is many-layered. It goes like this: Doug Milner (played by Bruce Davis-Goff) is a doomed playwright. After labouring vainly to write fine theatre, he is persuaded by a streetwise agent  (Kate Loughmane as a whirlwind, an unstoppable force of nature) to get with it, the stupid have inherited the earth, and what they want is smut. So Doug obliges. And gets famous. Well, notorious. And his resulting fifteen Minutes of fame is the ambivalent moral ground - and the manic mayhem - this play is built upon.

Alex Duncan as doomed actor Ben McShane. Photo: Kate Loughmane

In his role as the hapless Doug, Bruce Davis-Goff anchors the play superbly. He carries just the right mix of pride, bemusement and cynicism that Doug would naturally have. His monologues direct to the audience are masterful pieces of straight-out story-telling. He had me.

But here's where it get real interesting: the other members of the cast, Kate Loughmane, Mark James, Hannah Blumhardt and Alex Duncan, play between four and six roles each. They swirl around the collapse and corruption of Doug's life, a parasitic and hyperactive carousel of competing egos and ambitions. And it's all a fecund ground for hilarious situations. The cast was getting way more than a laugh a minute.

If it sounds confusing, then it's a testament to the actors (and some clever stagecraft devices) that The Fifteenth Minute runs as a seamless and fast-paced narrative. The four support actors are magnificent. You're instantly aware of what role they're in each time they come on.

Of his five roles, Mark James makes a sleazy wonder of 'Archbishop' Marcus Heslop, a dodgy tele-evangelist. Kate Loughmane's literary agent finds counterpoint in the rough-and-ready 'Bludge' Beasley, a security specialist.  Hannah Blumhardt has six roles, the most memorable being the long-suffering wife of the playwright, and an amphetamine-fuelled PR spin-doctor. Among his five roles, Alex Duncan completes the PR duo with fine menace, and disintegrates as an actor even more doomed than Doug as a writer. All good stuff. Hannah's tirade, especially, as the wife insulted by Doug's naïve kindness is tingly-spine stuff.

Beyond the laughs, The Fifteenth Minute is also provocative critique of the world of cult celebrity, television, and our slavish devotion to it. Ironies abound. And along the way, Alan Knight also tilts at other oddities of the way we live these days. It's superbly entertaining.

Here's the proof: after nearly two hours on a hard hall seat, I wasn't even aware of my backside. After nearly two hours, it was as if I'd only just entered The Fifteenth Minute. Only I wasn't famous. I was just enthralled. Go see it.

Alex Stone