Hello, Gaz Rhumbo! | Lightning Bolt Creative & Willem Whitfield
Heads up, this review contains mild spoilers.
If Peter Pan lived in the 21st century, this would be his plight. Hello, Gaz Rhumbo! is an original play that explores sex, love, regret, family expectations and mental health. From lights up, we are led through Gaz’s childhood, coming of age, adulthood and untimely death. The characters begin juvenile and simplistic but deepen as their relationships develop and their lives become more complicated. Along the way, unyielding from his dream of becoming a comedian and unwise to the demands of adult life, Gaz doesn’t seem to grow up.
Hello, Gaz Rhumbo! has a hella good nineties aesthetic, featuring flip phones, scrunchies and a glowing box tv in the corner. This tells us exactly who our audience is, those in their late-twenties/early thirties. The show’s main conflicts resonate with our own anxieties around career, commitment and settling down. They pay homage to Seinfeld in Gaz’s obsession with becoming ‘The Funny Man’, and borrow 90s sitcom conventions including oversized cue cards, bright costuming and a studio audience, all which distort our sense of reality. Moments of audience engagement were sprinkled throughout the show and I wanted more!
The show advertises itself as an absurdist comedy. The absurd element is spot on, with clever writing and joke props. A fully grown man in a diaper wails like a baby. A woman uploads information directly to her head and seems to orgasm. Frequently, the characters spoke in a voice from beyond their own experience, laying down exposition that felt simultaneously jarring and hilarious.
As far as comedy goes, there were great funny moments, but the drama hit hard. Hello, Gaz Rhumbo! took us up and down and around again through arguments and anguish and tragedy. Playing the lead, Willem Whitfield demonstrated his range, going from flirting to a full-blown argument in a matter of seconds. Playing Gaz’s career-driven girlfriend, Tenielle Plunkett showed magnificent versatility, balancing these serious moments with a goofy playfulness that made her extremely watchable.
The ensemble moments were fun. When not onstage, they waited in the aisles active and responding like a studio audience. As the scenes changed, they would erupt onto the stage, transforming it into a rowdy schoolyard or a horny college party. There were more simulated sex acts than I could count on the one hand, which were uncomfortable at times but I applaud the actors for their commitment and daringness to portray what is often beaten around the bush.
Brenton Smith wielded comedy with wild abandon. In one scene, as the school principal, he was announcing the graduates and had to wait for the audience to stop laughing; he looked so disappointed in us that we continued to laugh. What a great moment! I would love to see the actors take more time to let the comedy land, as the delivery was sometimes too fast for us to get the joke.
In future iterations, I think the supporting characters could be developed further. There are so many characters in Act One and often they appeared merely to serve the needs of the protagonist. It didn’t sit well with me when characters were reduced to sex objects, namely the overly-flirtatious ‘Eilish Jones’ with the comically large breasts. I would also like to see more of Phoebe's side of the story as Gaz’s voice dominates and doesn’t paint a full picture.
The show was a wild ride from start to finish. I laughed, groaned, cringed and cheered. Hello, Gaz Rhumbo! investigates what it means to be an adult in the modern world and dares to show the ugly bits.
