Playwright embraces the law and laughter

Tim Hambleton, Dunedin playwright and police prosecutor. Photo by Shane Gilchrist.

As a police prosecutor for the past 12 years, Tim Hambleton has witnessed his fair share of people awaiting judgement. Not surprising, then, that in his extracurricular activities as a playwright, he documents a group in a similar situation.

Heaven Help Us! is a light-hearted journey to heaven's waiting room, where traditional gatekeeper St Peter has taken stress leave and been replaced by an inexperienced moral screener who, according to Hambleton, makes a few mistakes and allows a few less-deserving souls to pass beyond the Pearly Gates.

"She thinks she takes it seriously but brings in the wrong sorts of people," Hambleton explains earlier this week, a day after attending a full rehearsal by the Clyde Theatre Group, which will perform a seven-night season of Heaven Help Us! at the Clyde Memorial Hall from tomorrow, Sunday.

"The first half of the play is set in the waiting room as the characters await entry to heaven. The characters are all very happy to get there and all think they deserve to be there. But when you boil it down, that is not the case at all - there is a great deal of luck in them getting there.

"The second half is set in heaven. There is a nasty character in there who is God's CEO. She is not happy that the replacement gatekeeper is letting in the wrong sorts of people and is trying to get rid of them."

Despite dealing with the subject of death, Hambleton says his play has no deep meaning. It is meant to be humorous, containing some elements of farce ("a little bit of farce can be fun, but you don't want too much ...").

Influenced by British comedies such as Dad's Army and Hi De Hi, he originally wrote Heaven Help Us! about 15 years ago, but has updated it and included some references to current topics of debate, such as Dunedin's new stadium.

Local characters have also stimulated his muse over the years, he says.

"When I was working in Alexandra as a lawyer in the mid-1990s, I got the inspiration for my first play, A Law Unto Themselves. Because I was seeing clients from all walks of life, I got the inspiration for some of these characters in this play.

"God's CEO is certainly manipulative, but there are others with annoying character traits. There is a librarian in the waiting room who is constantly telling everyone to be quiet; an old lady who is forgetful but has a hidden evil streak; a teenage girl who has a real attitude problem; there is a 'man's man' in there as well, a hunter.

"Presumably, in heaven you are going to get people from a wide cross-section of society. They all die in different ways: one gets bitten by a spider; another has a parachute that fails to open; another dies in a car crash.

"If someone says something that is particularly funny, I'll take a note of it and it might turn up in a play. People can be so funny in their day-to-day conversations."

Hambleton says writing plays is a good stress-release valve for "what I'm dealing with in court".

"It is not a good time in someone's life when they are appearing in court. To do something completely different and get some humour out there, that is an escape."

Hambleton enjoyed the first performance of one of his plays in 2000, when the Invercargill Repertory Group presented A Law Unto Themselves. Buoyed by that debut, he sent other plays to professional theatre groups, but "never heard back from them".

Budding playwrights are often caught in a catch-22 situation, he laments. To get a play put on in a professional theatre, a writer has to be "known". But if one can't get a play performed, a writer will remain in the wings.

"I parked the plays up for a long time. I sort of gave up on it," Hambleton says. "Then I thought community theatre was the best way to go. This one has had a lot of community involvement in Clyde, where people have really got behind it."

Despite admitting to a sense of trepidation on handing over his play to others to interpret, he acknowledges the joy in hearing someone laugh at something he has written.

"The great thing about writing dialogue is that you can have characters say things you would never say yourself.

"You just hope the version you had in your own head is similar to what you end up seeing on stage. I went to a rehearsal last night and what I saw pretty much mirrored what I had in mind when I wrote it."

Like his heaven-bound characters, Hambleton has also been involved in a waiting game. Initial hopes for a Saturday night opening for his play were dashed when it was discovered another group - line-dancers, no less - had booked the Clyde venue.

"I thought that was quite funny."

• Catch it
Heaven Help Us! opens at the Clyde Memorial Hall at 7.30pm tomorrow, Sunday, and runs to Saturday, May 15. Tickets available from FloorPride, Alexandra.