This is a story about a girl who followed a map off the edge of the world… In New Zealand there are 56,000 kilometres of paper roads that exist only on surveyor's maps. Or do they? From an award-winning company comes a dark fairytale combining puppetry, shadow play, and music into an original story for children and adults.
I thought that the concept of ‘The Road That Wasn’t There’ was original - the idea that paper roads lead to paper towns where paper people lived. The play had very strong references to New Zealand landscapes, folk myths and history. I would be interested in finding out what it would be like to see the play from a non-New Zealand perspective and whether or not this would add or detract from the viewing of the play.
Another concept was that the main character, Gabriel, had moved away from home to escape St Bathans and was returning to visit his mother. A lot of people leave New Zealand to go elsewhere for better prospects. The man discovers that sometimes where you want to be is closer to home than you’d thought. It was good to see somebody choosing to come back to New Zealand.
I thought that the underlying idea of the play was good; if done well by great actors it would produce an engaging play. The actors went on to convey the idea of the play well to the audience. The script was well written and the dialogue bouncy. An aspect of the props that I found particularly convincing was the use of several puppets. A noticeable puppet was the evil Retlaw. This puppet made very cleverly of paper and painted was able to frighten me and add a gothic, twisted side to the fairy-tale, taking away any childish aspects of the puppets.
The two lead actors, Elle Wootton and Oliver de Rohan, made the play. Elle Wootton’s part as the old woman was convincing.
One thing that I felt detracted from the play was its length – they stretched the story out for a little too long and could have made everything a lot tighter. This would have given the entire performance a more formed story arc. However, overall this was a good play and worth seeing, especially for the puppets. I would take someone to see it if it was on again.
Over 100 students attended this performance and afterwards had the opportunity to question the actors, director and technical crew. The questions were excellent and it helped us to apply acting techniques discussed to our own work.
