A VERY NZ HOLIDAY HELL - Barbara Frame, Otago Daily Times
Review by Barbara Frame, 20 Feb 2012
It's the holiday from hell as the very intellectual, liberal Redmond from Dunedin find themselves next to Invercargill über-bogans Mike Hislop, his wife Dawn and her teenage son Jared.
Clashes between the families are inevitable, and there's internal family conflict as well. Apart from the odd spot of violence, Mike's household have themselves fairly well sorted out, but the Redmonds have brought tension with them. Frank's a good teacher crumbling under the pressure to publish, and it doesn't help that wife Jude is academically more successful and openly contemptuous. Sulky daughter Holly seems welded to her phone.
There are obvious comparisons with The Tutor, also by Dave Armstrong, which played at the Fortune last year and contrasted educated and ignorant attitudes, and Roger Hall's Four Flat Whites in Italy, which did something similar. But while serious topics such as racism, family violence and social class are aired in The Motor Camp, don't look for much in the way of meaning. The emphasis is on comedy, much of it, as Holly would say, "gross."
Patrick Davies plays Frank, demonstrating his character's inhibitions and status anxiety. As the apparently effortlessly high-achieving Jude, Claire Dougan is carefully controlled, and Nadya Shaw Bennett shows us an all-too-believably bratty, privileged teenager.
Jonathan Hodge's Mike is nothing if not crass, and Kim Garrett's Dawn finds a warmth and tolerance that the Redmonds, for all their principles, cannot approach. Special mention must go to Joe Dekkers-Reihana, whose facial expressions and highly communicative body language make his portrayal of the inarticulate and functionally illiterate Jared outstanding.
The Motor Camp presents excellent and very New Zealand characters and situations, and I can't fault the Fortune's production, directed by Conrad Newport. I tired, however, of the play's farcical antics, tasteless laughs and foul language, and found the ending over-contrived.
