The Ballad Of Briar Grant – Basement Theatre: July 15, 2025 (13th Floor Theatre Review)
The Ballad of Briar Grant is a slightly surreal mystery with a story about personal change. It’s an ambitious piece of writing with some vignettes of brilliance, delivered confidently by director Lia Kelly and a theatre team who know what they’re about. And it does have a real ballad.
Touring the country, the script-driven production began in Wellington’s Bats Theatre with the idea to craft a challenging two-hander. Playwright Jack McGee has given his two actors some meat, and many words, to work with.
McGee gives us two characters on OE escaping from other relationships and (perhaps) from themselves.
Two women who talk and talk past each other. A mystery to solve. Maturity to grow. Relationships to explore, both with others and ourselves. They talk, and talk, and come to some conclusions about themselves. They learn, or seem to. We care, as we’re meant to. And we’re entertained, as we’d hope to be.
I’d call it a quirky piece of theatre, but that somewhat undersells it. We touch on some biggish themes, but lightly, in a slightly offbeat way. It’s a worthwhile night at the theatre.
There’s some rich symbolism here, or seems to be: communications that are uncertain; a prickly character, suitably named; a confrontation in an apple orchard (not just a tree of knowledge here to taste, we’re given a whole damn orchard). And these apples are real, and important. The team needs two giant sacks to do what they do —“they kind of looked like body bags,” the playwright said when the first sacks arrived.
So pay attention.
But can “the apple” even be digested, or at least enjoyed. That’s the emblematic challenge for one character here. (“Just one nudge would help,” she admits, to begin her necessary journey.)
We could have done perhaps with a little more motion on stage. We did like the break into song. And we did appreciate the physicality of work with the apple crates, the suggestion of meditation while at work. (It brought to mind with both myself and my companion a play called Bent produced many years ago at Theatre Corporate, designed by John Parker.)
Phoebe Caldeiro brings a magnetism to her role here that the play demands. Believable and funny, her timing suggests more comedy would reward her. Anna Barker in the ‘title’ role’ is the unknown, the catalyst, the mile-a-minute talker who has the hard job of being both likeable and annoying. One senses however that the direction for Briar gives Barker less than she can do, that her delivery is called upon to be too one-dimensional (would one speak to God in the same voice as to yourself, to a lover, in an argument, in a meditation). She could have been called on to more, we thought —madness, after all, has many voices.
Squash Co Arts Collective is a theatre company with a future. They say they are constantly challenging ourselves and each other as artists, which is great. But they also hope that they can bring their grandparents to their productions too without embarrassment, which I hope doesn’t limit them.
I look forward to seeing more.
Theatre Peter
Photography by Emily K Brown
THE BALLAD OF BRIAR GRANT by Squash Co Arts Collective is on at Auckland’s Basement Theatre from 15 to 19 July, and then around the country until mid-August.
Info and tickets here.
