Abby Lyons
Oh That Theatre Company is a multi-award winning young theatre company whose work focuses on creating “fun, wild, camp, ridiculous while also sincere theatre’; and with the horrendous weather in Pōneke currently, this is right up my alley and I’m looking forward to a cozy piece of theatre.
Five Words or Less follows two co-workers Eudora (Lizzy Burton-Wood) and Jamie (Olive Riordan) who are ready to move up the ranks of their greeting card company. Sick of the birthday card department, the pair open the show with a musical pitch for a promotion; “any promotion will do!”, they exclaim. But when it is revealed that only one promotion is available in the father’s day department; Eudora and Jamie compete against each other, reconciling with their respective fathers in order to come up with the best father’s day card.
The strength of this show lies in its musical numbers. From the opening pitch song, the energy and joy is high. Accompanied by the ever impressive (and nonstop performing!) Damian Tjiptono on the guitar and the three ensemble members (Ngarongonui Mareikura-Ellery, Lydia Sainsbury and Craig Hutchison) on background harmonies; the songs are hilarious and toe-tappingly fun. It's endearing and earnest, and really makes me want to learn more about these characters and see them succeed.
Burton-Wood and Riordan are an entertaining pair. Burton-Wood wonderfully embodies the awkwardness of seeing your work-crush by the water cooler and has some sweet moments when trying to reconnect with her father. It’s worth mentioning that Burton-Wood also directed, wrote and composed the show and I suspect this is why I feel her performance is not as fine-tuned as some of the other cast’s. But, this is a huge undertaking and I want to applaud her for her efforts; girl, I hope you are resting once this show is done!
Riordan is engaging and delightful. I love their switch between the silly side-kick colleague Jamie to the classic suburban Dad of Eudora, very concerned about their driveway project. They walk a nice line of sincerity and comedy throughout the show and even made my heart pang when they turned to the audience with guilt in their eyes as they realised they don’t know who their Dad really is.
I also want to shout out Lydia Sainsbury for her impressive performance in the ensemble. She steals the show with her huge facial expressions and delightful commitment to the bit; especially with a surprise cameo in act two of the show.
In between the musical numbers, however, the pace of the show drops significantly. The actors no longer feel like they are listening or engaging with one another and instead, the dialogue comes out too quiet and too fast, seemingly more from muscle memory than actually responding to each other in the moment. This results in missed gags, confusing plot points and overall made me lose who these characters were and what they actually want.
The narrative also feels convoluted and at times I find it hard to determine which is the key storyline I should invest in. There are funny and endearing moments in each scenario we find our characters in; trying to come up with the best father’s day card to snag the promotion, reconnecting with their dad’s and watching them learn that maybe they can be friends outside of work; that their friendship is more important than any promotion. But, none of these feel fully explored and I am ultimately left restless and unsatisfied with the arc of the show.
Our three ensemble members sit upstage behind three office cubicles, each decorated to represent their greeting card department. We have everything from Halloween to Valentines to opposite day and there are fun Easter Eggs to spot throughout the show. These cubicles then rotate to become rolling hills with puppet birds and then again to become cars for the long, winding road trips with Dad. Each of these reveals made me go “oh cool” and helped shakeup the pacing of the show with each new location.
But, at times, these cubicles and the action behind them became distracting and pulled my focus away from Burton-Wood and Riordan’s performances. There are long bits that play out behind our key characters that don’t feel like they have any payoff and ultimately feels chaotic and a bit messy. A few technical mishaps also pulled me from the world, such as seeing the stage manager through the backstage door and a random green light that took me a beat too long to figure out was an office printer; a cool idea but one that needed more time and attention to execute effectively.
Overall, Five Words or Less has flashes of genius, joy and the songs bring out the best and funniest bits of everyone involved. With a clearer story arc and firmer hand on what they want to say, Oh That Theatre Company have a lot of potential and will no doubt be back at BATS with more heartwarming work in no time.
⭐⭐⭐
Five Words or Less is on at BATS until Saturday 7th September - more info here.