Third Person, Tense!

Overview

Stephen Papps’ Third Person, Tense! is a little bit brilliant. It's bursting with a Kiwi sense of humour: the dry sarcasm and casual one-liners that cause lesser beings to double-back and question what was just said. It’s very premise, a one-man show with another (wo)man, should be a tell-tale sign of the sort of humour you can anticipate.

Papps, as writer and lead, tells the tale of Jack and Rose (Titanic reference Mr Papps?), a “story of love, hope and cockups”, or something like that. Jack’s your average, underpaid Kiwi actor who's chasing his big break. From the beginning, there’s a figure buried under a blanket who eventually wakes up to crash Jack's show.  Sally, played by Lizzie Tollemache, had been out partying and it’s here that they meet. The story of how she ended up there unfolds, wrapped up in the retelling of Jack’s romantic history, which she consistently and hilariously interrupts.

Directed by Mark Clare, there is an amusing use of the major prop, a blanket, and the actors own physicality and vocal ability. At one point the audience is brought into the nightclub where Sally and Jack are first introduced. The space is cleverly used too, acknowledged as a theatre space and used as such, a toilet out back flushes as ignorant Sally undermines Jack’s sad tale. I don’t know Papps, but I'm convinced there must be a fairly large amount of his own essence within the character of Jack, and Tollemache, well, she’s got comedic timing down to a fine art.

The whole time I was watching this I felt I needed to keep a record of the smashing one-liners just so I could share them with you. But there are so many that you’re going to have to see the show yourself. It’s a jolly good laugh, a play written for most New Zealanders. It may see Papps and Co. make it to the cover of the Woman’s Day... if you see the play, you'll know what I mean.