HALL PLAY DELIVERS LITERARY LEVITY
Reviewed by Barbara Frame, Monday,10 February 2014 originally published in Otago Daily Times
However you choose to read the title of Roger Hall's new play, it's apt. Six men, all literary in some sense, meet at the (also aptly named) Sour Dough cafe. There's little action - these are gold-card people - and not a lot of plot.
What there is, for the audience, is delight – shelf-loads of it. Each of the very different characters is highly believable, even recognisable, and the actors, mostly veterans of Hall plays, present them superbly. Read the full review here.
ERUDITE CAMARADERIE OFTEN BITING AS WELL AS FUNNY
Reviewed by Terry MacTavish, Monday, 10 February 2014, Theatreview
Book Ends, Roger Hall's entertaining new play selected to start Fortune's 2014 season, is an offering sure to please.
The Cabin Fever Club (based on one Hall actually started in Ponsonby), which meets at the Sour Dough Cafe, comprises six writers who are at the Ends of their working lives. Despite their real and affected cynicism about the book world, they are still anxious to be involved. But what of the menacing advance of technology, threatening their very livelihood? Will it mean the End of Books?
The four scenes at the cafe take place a year apart, and so we see the men first panic, then come to terms with each new technological development, using smartphones and reading newspapers online while recalling regretfully the days when the Guardian Weekly was posted out from England ‘on almost translucent airmail paper'. It gives a nice smug feeling to be reminded of how far we've come. Is it really only a couple of years ago we were freaking out over iPads? And now I read (online) of a school where every student is given one. Read the full review here.
