FLAT OUT ON FLAT WHITES – Roger Hall’s latest offering premiers this week
Sarah Lang, writing for View magazine in the Herald on Sunday, 7 June, 2009

It’s not hard to see why playwright Roger Hall has been compared to the Energiser Bunny. At 70 - an age when most of his peers are slowing down and kicking back at the golf course - Hall is still pumping out plays like clockwork. His latest effort is Four Flat Whites In Italy, an Auckland Theatre Company-staged tale of two 60-something couples sharing the pleasures and pitfalls of a late-in-life OE.

In his trademark boggly glasses, Hall is refuelling with a coffee and pastry at a central-city Auckland café. Reserved and matter-of-fact with a dry, subtle sense of humour, he’s slightly brusque but not unfriendly. You get the sense that whether or not he’s liked (at least by a journalist) doesn’t matter to him.
Rather than batting away the question of whether he sees himself as New Zealand’s greatest playwright, he merely considers it through a rational commercial lens.
“The merit or otherwise of my plays aside, I’ve written more plays and fed more into the box office than any other New Zealand playwright.” And indeed, well past the half-time interval in a stellar career, why should he subscribe to that most Kiwi of afflictions, Tall Poppy Syndrome?

Since his debut play Glide Time sold out in 1976, British-born-and-bred Hall (who moved to New Zealand at 19) has penned at least a play a year. Performed around the globe as well as at home, these include Middle Age Spread, Spreading Out, By Degrees, Market Forces, C’Mon Black, Social Climbers, The Book Club, Taking Off, Who Wants to be 100? and Who Needs Sleep Anyway? (the latter a collaboration with actor/director daughter Pip).

Blending cracker one-liners with understated pathos and satirical social criticism, Hall’s bitter-sweet plays have been compared to that of Anton Chekhov, the great 19th-century Russian scribe. (Incidentally, they share a birthday.)
Like Chekhov, Hall has more than one string to his bow. As well sitting on literary and arts boards, the former insurance agent, schoolteacher and lecturer maintains a prolific literary output. Plays aside, he’s written children’s books, musicals, TV series, radio series, poetry, magazine articles, short stories, autobiography Bums on Seats, and is currently penning his fifth childrens’ pantomime in as many years for Wellington’s Circa Theatre.

But the next show he’ll see come to life is Four Flat Whites. With relationships and the Kiwi character at its heart, it’s classic Hall fare. Clutching a copy of Lonely Planet, recently-retired librarians Adrian (Stuart Devenie) and Alison (Darien Takle) are gearing up to immerse themselves in Italy. But when their best friends pull out of the trip, they find themselves sharing the holiday with new neighbours, Harry (George Henare) and Judy (Annie Whittle). Will they be able to keep up their busy sightseeing schedule and will Adrian’s wandering eye push Alison too far?
Anyone who’s travelled in tandem will identify with the situations the characters find themselves in, and the compromises they make. Such as the “terrible nuisance” of splitting a restaurant bill (the scenario that was the genesis of the play). “It depends if everyone’s had roughly the same amount to eat and, particularly, to drink. Once, it doesn't matter, but if it starts happening regularly...!"

Almost grudgingly admitting that Four Flat Whites is funny, Hall warns not to expect any lost-luggage farce. “It’s a sadder, deeper play that that.” A onetime recipient of the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Scholarship, Hall aims to emulate the tightrope balance of sadness and humour at the heart of Mansfield’s stories.

Although his primary, "very-loyal" audience are the baby boomers he’s guided through the share-market crash, middle-age and retirement, Hall knows the value of drawing younger generations to his plays. Playing “every Italian woman”, Toni Potter - best known as Shortland Street party-girl Alice - should inject some glamour and pull a younger crowd. (Hall doesn’t choose actors but has some input in discussion with the director, in this case Janice Finn.) Potter can’t wait. “It’s a rite of passage for a New Zealand actor to perform in a Roger Hall play.”
And yes, Hall’s nervous about opening night. While these tough economic times makes getting bums on seats even tougher, he’s always had “agonies of doubt” about each play from first idea to closing night. “Opening night’s a bit terrifying, because you still don’t know how the audience is going to take it… and [there’s] a lot of showbiz people who are much harder to impress.” While he still attends the premiere, Hall prefers going to 1 or 2 later shows, once the more-relaxed audience isn’t peppered with showbiz people, celebs and reviewers.

So, is he a naturally-funny person? “No” he says with a rare laugh. “Well, I do like cracking jokes. Occasionally if I’m on song I can be quite funny… I remember Sharon Crosbie saying, or even Michael Cullen recently said,their wit hurt people unintentionally. I hope I haven’t done it too often but it’s hard to curb what I have to say.”

But what more commonly makes people uneasy is whether he’ll put them in a play. “My stock answer is I’m an observer, not a spy. Still, you get a lot of material from your family!” (He asked wife Dianne to read play Conjugal Rites before he dared take her to opening night.)
Indeed, one of Hall’s favourite quotes is: ‘any marriage is more interesting than any murder’. “One’s own relationships and other people’s - what makes them tick or not tick - is a never-ending fund of interest. Relationships are what this play – all the plays – are about.”
And Hall has no plans to put down his pen anytime soon. Not because he needs the money (he doesn’t), but because writing’s become a way of life. “There’s plenty of other 70-year-old writers so I think it’s the sort of occupation where people just don’t stop.”

*Four Flat Whites premieres at Auckland’s SkyCity Theatre (June 11-July 4), then tours North Shore City, Hamilton, New Plymouth and Tauranga.