Don't Hold Your Breath

I had never been to a semi-staged/workshop based performance before, however I thought it might be interesting to see what happens behind closed doors at the Auckland Theatre Company.

Don’t Hold Your Breath is a play with songs, written by Lisa Chappell of Gloss and McLeod’s Daughter’s fame. The actors had a week of staging and rehearsing the script under the direction of Ben Crowder and musical direction by Penny Dodd before performing it twice and receiving feedback from the audience on the storyline, music and staging.

The story follows Letitia Lush who aspires to become a famous singer of like her idol Frank Sinatra. After reading that Frank Sinatra attributes his success to his enormous lung capacity, Letitia begins experimenting, using her younger sister Rose, as a guinea pig by drowning her in the bath and training her to beat Sinatra’s record. Unfortunately for Letitia, Rose also has a brilliant voice, and the exploitation she suffers at the hand of Letitia assists in the training of her voice. When Letitia, and ultimately Letitia’s manager realise Rose can sing, jealousy takes over and old and new rivalries take the sisters to breaking point.

Watching this show be performed, it was obvious there was some work that needed to be done on the script, however it certainly has great potential. The ending that had been chosen for this version was a much lighter and happier ending than the one in the original script, however upon hearing of the original version (which ultimately ended in a death) I thought that would give the story more depth and intrigue although it may cause the show to lose its happy and comic genre rating.

The show certainly had some very funny parts, such as Letitia’s constant attempts at physically hurting Rose, which although it sounds quite nasty actually has a comic element to it. The set was well done, particularly with their use of styrofoam instead of water in the bath. The musical numbers were great and very well done and the acting was suburb, as to be expected from Auckland Theatre Company. It was a bit off putting to have Letitia using her script throughout the show, but given they had only been rehearsing for a week and the script had been changed numerous times, that could be forgiven.

It may be a while before this show hits the stages again, due to the desire of Lisa to work quite intensely on certain aspects of the script; however when it does come back to New Zealand stages make sure you go along. It’s a great piece of New Zealand writing.