Regent Theatre Clarkson Studio
Tuesday, September 12.
Local treasures were delightfully demolished, cherished wisdoms from Jane Austen’s critically observant novels were thrown into the destructor and interspersed with unleashed handholding.
Improvisation artists Penny Ashton and Lori Dungey, accompanied by keyboard maestro Jamie Burgess, careered through Dance and Destruction.
The audience is involved from the outset, giving the actors cues to collating a series of unlikely events and characters.
"Volunteers" readily comply in being led through a merry dance; names are generated from members of any royal family, your favourite pet coupled with the surname Bottom; local environs provide several backdrops.
Jane Thumperbottom, Pick Fordbottom, Lord Octa Gone of Duneshire, Molar Mansion, a maddened marauding penguin, multiple exploding trees, and women’s love of "big gay balls" and shimmering up mammoth men are all part of this "period comedy".
After some six years and 16 shows into their tour, coin-tossing Ashton grabs the lead role leaving Dungey the remaining five roles.
Dungey cleverly intones a sister, a best friend, a bishop, a lord and a cook.
Amazing synchrony of song and dance, minimal props and lead-grabbing dialogue are testament to their seat-of-the-pants inspiration.
Arts on Tour New Zealand is congratulated for supporting this highly successful enterprise in its nationwide tour.
Austen Found provides an excellently executed, hilarious and side-splitting bit of nonsense to create tears of joy, all much-needed.
Pure entertainment has real worth.
The arts provide us all with moments of reflection. Humour is always the best antidote to plaguing ills. We wish the Bottom family well as they splinter forth in frivolously wanton abandon.
