Alia Marshall
After a successful six week run in 2024, Roger Hall’s latest play End of Summer Time is back at Circa for a limited run, bringing back an iconic character from his body of work: Dickie Hart. As a PhD student focusing on Aotearoa’s canonical plays, I’m very familiar with Hall’s work, and I am curious to see what his latest script will deliver.
When we enter Circa Two we find ourselves in an open plan lounge/kitchen in Dickie Hart’s apartment. Once the lights go down, our boy Dickie boogies onstage and begins the show with a powerpoint on the back wall, giving us some context about how his life has led him to this point. He’s recently moved to Auckland with his beloved wife Glenda and, as you can imagine, this former farm boy is quite unaccustomed to his surroundings. What follows is a one man show about the trials and tribulations of getting older, but I find myself struggling to connect and empathise with the main character.
Set designer Nathan Arnott has done a good job turning Circa Two into the quintessential home of your middle class grandma and grandpa, though some more props/clutter would have added to the “lived in” feel. There are some very clever moments with the lighting design (Marcus McShane) that work really well with the text, like the bus window or the spotlight on the armchair. It’s little details like this that I really appreciate throughout the evening, but I found myself craving a few more moments of theatre magic.
Now, I have a lot of thoughts as I leave the show. I want to say outright that I know I’m not the target demographic for this show, I knew that walking in and I definitely knew that walking out. By the same token, I’m also someone who writes, and I think that this show could do with some revisions. Let’s start with the big one: cut the bigotry. There are so many “I hate my wife” and “immigration is bad” jokes peppered throughout the show that I find myself wincing more than laughing. Call me a woke leftie all you want, but I think that casual racism, sexism, and vegan jokes are tired, lazy, and hacky. I know that this character is meant to be someone who is from a different time, but at this stage I really struggle to engage with shows that go for the lowest hanging fruit, even if it is to make a point.
There are ways of writing characters like Dickie Hart that can work, but only if that character undergoes a significant transformation, and I do not feel that he did. There are a few moments in the second act where he engages with queer culture and muses on the beauty of seeing so many different people at the beach, but that’s about as much as we get. By the end we’re supposed to believe that he has had a change of heart, that the things he has been through have led him to having a more open mind, but it just feels like it was tacked on in a later edit in an attempt to redeem him. If his character arc had been more focused on trying to change his world view or connecting with different people, then the end would have resonated, but that is not the case. I don’t want to sound like I can’t take a joke, and there are a few decent jokes in there that did tickle me, but they are sandwiched between moments that just feel like an old man yelling at a cloud.
Gavin Rutherford as Dickie Hart (it’s also spelled “Dickey” in another section of the programme so apologies if I’ve messed that up) does his best to charm us, but I think I’m more charmed by Rutherford than I am Hart. His characterisation throughout is consistent, adeptly switching between roles through smooth changes in his voice and his posture, even conjuring up tears from thin air. Rutherford is a talent, that’s undeniable, I just wish the text could have given him more to work with.
Throughout the show there are glimmers of some really important themes and ideas that I wish were explored further. We often forget how hard it is for the older people in our lives, and this show reminds us of that fact. At one point in the second act during the Covid years, Dickie finds himself in a deep depression, unable to take care of himself or reach out for help. Rutherford performs these moments with an earnestness and vulnerability that I wanted so much more of. When he describes the profound loneliness he feels during this period, I find myself thinking about the last time I saw my grandma, her words about how isolated she felt echoing in my mind. This is where the show really shines, and I would love to see the show expand upon these more hard hitting truths in between all of the jokes.
End of Summer Time, with a lot of script development, could be a really hard hitting piece of theatre focusing on our older whānau. I walk out thinking about my remaining grandparent and remind myself to call her, life really is too short.
End of Summer Time is on in Circa Two until Sunday 13th of April.
Set designer Nathan Arnott has done a good job turning Circa Two into the quintessential home of your middle class grandma and grandpa, though some more props/clutter would have added to the “lived in” feel. There are some very clever moments with the lighting design (Marcus McShane) that work really well with the text, like the bus window or the spotlight on the armchair. It’s little details like this that I really appreciate throughout the evening, but I found myself craving a few more moments of theatre magic.
Now, I have a lot of thoughts as I leave the show. I want to say outright that I know I’m not the target demographic for this show, I knew that walking in and I definitely knew that walking out. By the same token, I’m also someone who writes, and I think that this show could do with some revisions. Let’s start with the big one: cut the bigotry. There are so many “I hate my wife” and “immigration is bad” jokes peppered throughout the show that I find myself wincing more than laughing. Call me a woke leftie all you want, but I think that casual racism, sexism, and vegan jokes are tired, lazy, and hacky. I know that this character is meant to be someone who is from a different time, but at this stage I really struggle to engage with shows that go for the lowest hanging fruit, even if it is to make a point.
There are ways of writing characters like Dickie Hart that can work, but only if that character undergoes a significant transformation, and I do not feel that he did. There are a few moments in the second act where he engages with queer culture and muses on the beauty of seeing so many different people at the beach, but that’s about as much as we get. By the end we’re supposed to believe that he has had a change of heart, that the things he has been through have led him to having a more open mind, but it just feels like it was tacked on in a later edit in an attempt to redeem him. If his character arc had been more focused on trying to change his world view or connecting with different people, then the end would have resonated, but that is not the case. I don’t want to sound like I can’t take a joke, and there are a few decent jokes in there that did tickle me, but they are sandwiched between moments that just feel like an old man yelling at a cloud.
Gavin Rutherford as Dickie Hart (it’s also spelled “Dickey” in another section of the programme so apologies if I’ve messed that up) does his best to charm us, but I think I’m more charmed by Rutherford than I am Hart. His characterisation throughout is consistent, adeptly switching between roles through smooth changes in his voice and his posture, even conjuring up tears from thin air. Rutherford is a talent, that’s undeniable, I just wish the text could have given him more to work with.
Throughout the show there are glimmers of some really important themes and ideas that I wish were explored further. We often forget how hard it is for the older people in our lives, and this show reminds us of that fact. At one point in the second act during the Covid years, Dickie finds himself in a deep depression, unable to take care of himself or reach out for help. Rutherford performs these moments with an earnestness and vulnerability that I wanted so much more of. When he describes the profound loneliness he feels during this period, I find myself thinking about the last time I saw my grandma, her words about how isolated she felt echoing in my mind. This is where the show really shines, and I would love to see the show expand upon these more hard hitting truths in between all of the jokes.
End of Summer Time, with a lot of script development, could be a really hard hitting piece of theatre focusing on our older whānau. I walk out thinking about my remaining grandparent and remind myself to call her, life really is too short.
End of Summer Time is on in Circa Two until Sunday 13th of April.