Jack McGee

Before We Slip Beneath the Sea is the multi-Adam-award winning, immersive theatre, partial PHD thesis, brainchild of Aotearoa theatre stalwart Cassandra Tse. It follows the residents of the fictional Eglantyne island, located off the coast of Ohariu, as they are forced to evacuate their homes due to slowly impending climate disaster. Its debut season is produced by Tse’s own Red Scare Theatre in the Aro Community Centre which doubles as the Eglantyne Town Hall. We, the audience, are fellow citizens of Eglantyne. After scribbling out some name tags, we’re let loose in the hall as the island’s farewell party plays out around us.
ON EXPERIENCING EGLANTYNE
The great excitement of Before We Slip Beneath the Sea is that it is an uneasy intersection between intricate playwriting and spontaneous immersive theatre. In Before We Slip, play is a sprawling, communal, mess on which we glimpse and eavesdrop, as opposed to a narrow series of events observed from an all seeing eye. It is a world we are invited into, made a part of and yet, it is still a play. A densely written play at that. It requires both performers and audience to constantly shift modes, alternating between lightly improvised sections where the audience are invited to participate and more traditional scripted performance where the audience are all but ignored.
I’m invited by Marty (Craig Geenty) to help with a food stocktake. I am in the play. He hands me a notepad and dictates to me what’s left in the cupboards. I take detailed notes. He thanks me and our interaction ends. Clive (Ralph Jonson) enters the room. The two launch into a scene, where Marty convinces Clive to confront Maggie (Helen Jones) about a choice she’s made and try to change her mind. I am watching the play. The conversation feels intimate and not something I could watch unfold if I was actually a person in this room. It’s a distinct kind of suspension of disbelief. It’s tense. It feels violatory, I'm the unseen camera-person in a documentary. I do not feel for a moment like it is my place to interrupt, that I could try to step in and get Clive not to talk to Maggie. Soon, when the situation dictates it, I will be in the play again.
As Clive and Marty’s conversation is unfolding, elsewhere in the room other audience members are being invited into corners of the play I will never see. Perhaps there’s a scene taking place establishing Maggie’s current state of mind - I can only speculate, I didn’t see it. When I follow Clive over and watch his explosive argument with Maggie, I know his backstory, his context. I do not know hers. In the play I experience, scenes are constructed by Tse in such a way that they quickly justify themselves. Any audience member can wander into anything at any moment and so every line of dialogue needs to work overtime, every beat must be laced with exposition, every scene must be a one act play. This allows us comprehension at the cost of immersion. It feels inherent, the presumed alternative is an experience where I am constantly unmoored, only grounded by the few scenes that involve the full cast. And yet, it keeps me constantly aware of this uncomfortable divide, the shift back to watching the play.
On one hand, the form Tse has constructed to house her story is a masterwork of craft. Engineering an elaborate and interwoven narrative that keeps itself consistently accessible to its audience is a titanic task of both writing and directing. The form is entertaining in and of itself. There are moments where I distance myself from the content and attempt to wrap my head around the complex dance the actors are performing all around me. I go to sit in a chair and assistant director Abby Lyons gently nudges me aside. Moments later, a performer comes and fills it. I light up, delighted by how much work goes into just getting a mark ready, let alone anyone actually hitting it.
On the other hand, the form keeps me at an arm's length from the emotion of the text. As exciting as it is to have an idiosyncratic experience, to feel a sense of ownership and discovery, I miss the precision and nuance a controlled experience allows. When you have complete authority over the information the audience is receiving and when they receive it, you can lay traps. You can feed their subconscious with all the little pieces required for a moment to floor them - and the payoff can be tiny. It can be a line, a small gesture, a look. Before We Slip’s payoffs are by necessity massive. I count two kisses and a punch. They send ripples around the room, but I do not feel them. I’ve either missed the emotional context to make them meaningful, or those details have been smoothed out to make the moment narratively digestible.
It’s apples and oranges, comparing immersive theatre to a traditional drama. But unlike many immersive experiences which lean more heavily on improvisation, Before We Slip is truly a bit of both. To experience it feels less like going through a magic closet and entering another world, and more like getting shrunk down and injected into the pdf of its script. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s a truly audacious way to tell a story.
ON EGLANTYNE ITSELF
By setting the show on a fictional island, Tse gives it some remove from current events. Without going too far into spoilers, there’s a series of incidents that occur in the second half of the show which have parallels with some contemporary political issues - both locally and globally. Before We Slip lets these events inform its narrative, without ever feeling directly allegorical or one-to-one. It keeps the show feeling fresh, and prevents us as an audience from ever feeling truly like we’ve ‘solved it’.
On the flip side, this remove allows for us to distance ourselves a little from the realities of climate disaster. The show’s world-building is a delight to get caught up in. Eglantyne Hall is the product of designer Lucas Neale and he has a field day with the details. The walls are donned with painted banners, and the tables have a scattering of soft drinks which are all quickly nabbed by the audience on entry. There’s a karaoke table, a pile of fliers for Maggie the aspiring local politician, and the hall kitchen is loaded with snacks to be prepared and dishes to be done.
The premise feels like a thought experiment. What if there was an island off the coast of Ohariu? It lends the show a fantastical quality, keeping me from feeling the full weight of it’s events. This lightness is only amplified by the immersive nature of the show. Even when it goes to dark places it feels like a game. Is it too fun? Do shows about subject matter like this have to ruin your weekend? Probably not. There’s a profundity to the script, especially in it’s final moments, which are haunting and poetic. They don’t sting me like I except them to. Part of me wishes they did, but it’s hard to begrudge something for being easy to watch.
From talking to fellow audience members, there are two different ways people engage with the characters. The first camp pick their favourites and stick with them, choosing to get everything out of these narratives and mostly ignore the other plotlines. The second, which I fall into, tries to catch a little bit of everyone, actively floating from scene to scene. I regret my choices a little. While it’s nice to get a broad overview of everything, it keeps me from every truly connecting with any of the characters.
I am most impressed by the performers’ ability to perform with and without audience. To launch into a scene and embody it whether or not there’s anyone there to watch it. To perform without an audience, and then with one, and then without one, must be so thoroughly disorientating and I commend the cast for the stability of their performances. I also want to applaud the specificity of each characters voice and vocabulary. Conversations between Maggie and Clive are a delight to listen to, as mentions of “boys own” make feel like I'm eavesdropping on my grandparents. A rich attention to detail emanates from the script as well the set, which unfortunately I find is less present in the performances.
Every member of the show's extensive cast acquit themselves capably. While some performers are more adept at interacting with the audience than others (unsurprisingly improviser Megan Connolly is well versed at this), everyone rises to the challenge. I specifically want to shout out newcomer Billie Deganutti, who is presented a formidable task as the heart of the show. That being said, I feel that every scene I see could go substantially further with a couple more weeks of rehearsal. I suspect that the scale of the piece has got in the way of polish. There are essentially three plays worth of material happening at once in Before We Slip, and I assume the production is not receiving three plays worth of financing or rehearsal time. I’m hesitant to dwell too long on speculation or things peripheral to the play. The show we see is what we get. Yet, I can’t not acknowledge my sadness that Before We Slip, lauded by Playmarket’s Adam Award as (at least) the second strongest new script written in Aotearoa last year is (presumably) not having money thrown at it from every direction. Before We Slip Beneath the Sea, ATC, 2026. Let’s see it.
ON LEAVING EGLANTYNE
The form of Before We Slip Beneath the Sea both draws me in and keeps me at a distance. The remove it creates between me and the emotionality of the play is only equalled by the awe and excitement it provokes in me. It is at once frustrating and inspiring. I’ve decided this is a good thing. I don’t think there’s any doubt that Tse could’ve created a more conventional ensemble drama about climate that would’ve fucked me up. Equally, I’m sure she could’ve worked with our thriving improv community to devise a more conventional immersive theatre experience, which would’ve likely been equally effective. Instead she’s innovating and making the pond bigger for all of us in the process.
Crucially, this is one of many immersive plays Tse will be developing over the course of her PHD. This is square one. Textually, it’s a work that sings about place. About our place. It’s a tentative elegy, sung less prematurely than we’d like to believe. For me personally however, it leaves me grateful to live here for a different reason. It leaves me with excitement, to see what Tse, Red Scare, and our community will create next, before we slip beneath the sea.
Photo credit - Josh Hopton-Stewart