Feeling lucky? Well? Are you? Then, roll up! Roll up! Get your ticket to a world of infinite impossibilities!The New Zealand premiere of Lucky Numbers opens in the perfectly-named Fortune Theatre tomorrow night.
And this one promises to hit the jackpot.
The stakes are extra high in this Dunedin version of Lucky Numbers.
"When the play was originally written, the prize was $8 million, but after that Masterton family won $30 million last month we had to bang it up to $20 million, because $8 million sounds a bit like second division now," director Ross Jolly says laughing.
"It's become remarkably relevant with that big Lotto win by that Masterton family. It couldn't be more relevant if we planned it."
Jolly is referring to the $36.9 million Big Wednesday lottery draw won by a Masterton family syndicate last month.
"It's about a family that's down on its luck and working-class that wins Lotto. A bit like that family in Masterton. Their humanity is sacrificed for venality as they search for the ticket. Everyone becomes very venal and cruel and dark."
Lucky Numbers, originally set in England, has been adapted for a Dunedin setting.
It is an evening with a normally dysfunctional family: There's an addled grandmother, a couch-potato father, a goth daughter and a next-door neighbour who trawls internet dating sites as the "Corstorphine Love Machine".
But, everything is turned on its ear when the grandmother wins $20 million in Lotto.
Jolly has assembled a top cast for the production, including Louise Petherbridge, Julie Edwards, Aaron Alexander, Jason Ward Kennedy, Esther Green, Daniel Armstrong and Samuel Irwin.
Petherbridge (78), who was awarded a QSO for her service to theatre, played Katherine Mansfield in the second play staged by the Fortune Theatre, Two Tigers, in 1973.
Her last Fortune appearance was Aunty and Me in 2005.
"The casting is 80% of it," Jolly says. "You try to serve the playwright. He's done most of the work. Our job is to bring the characters to life.
"It's a very physical play. You try to honour the humour and undertones and the slightly darker elements. It's very well-written commercial comedy. It's like a Roger Hall [play]. There are lots of twist and turns to the plot."
Jolly is, himself, a big fan of theatrical comedy " I don't know if being called Jolly affected my decision to do comedy, but the theatre I enjoy watching has comedy elements in it.
I think we all crave a bit of comedy.
"I love it when we're all working together [in rehearsals] and people are tossing ideas around and the creativity side is running hot. That's when it's really amusing to us, too, and we'll be laughing ourselves. That's the most enjoyable part of the process, I think.
"The purpose of a play like this is to amuse and entertain and say something as well. Good comedy shouldn't be frightened to tiptoe across to the dark side."
Jolly, who directed Don Juan in Soho at the Fortune last month, is a veteran of New Zealand stage and television.
He starred in the pioneering television series Gliding On and has credits for everything from Xena: Warrior Princess to films like the classic Sleeping Dogs.
He was a founding director of Wellington theatre Circa, in 1976, and won Director of the Year in 1999 for Waiting for Godot.
Lucky Numbers playwright Mike Yeaman also worked as an actor for many years, on programmes such as Coronation Street and Heartbeat, before he started writing for television series Smack The Pony and Spitting Image.
"I thought it would be fun to take a central character with little control left in their life and then give them something that everyone else wanted," Yeaman (47) tells the Otago Daily Times from his home in Northumberland, just outside Newcastle, England.
"The theme of poverty being alleviated with sudden wealth is a universal theme. A relatively small amount of money would transform most people's lives. Although, winning 10 times as much wouldn't make you 10 times happier.
"If you could have absolutely anything you wanted, I think it would get quite dull eventually.
"Nana's fun with the lottery ticket is her triumph over her loss of independence and loss of her own mind. She's actually being very cunning in her moments of madness and manages to get her whole family to change their lives in the ways that she wants. How many people manage to do that?
"Human willpower can be amazingly strong, even as the mind degenerates.
"I know a few people who have had painful struggles caring for a parent with dementia.
Recounting what their parent has said or done and seeing the funny side of it has been an important coping mechanism. `Humour is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity', James Thurber once said.
"That's what's great about theatre. You can take your audience anywhere - a living room or a battlefield.
"Nothing beats listening outside an auditorium to people laughing at your play."
See it
Lucky Numbers opens at the Fortune Theatre at 7.30pm tomorrow and runs until August 1.
