New Publication: LONDON CALLING

Ken Duncum

The three plays in this book I think of as the music plays. If you¹d asked me ten years ago, I would have said they were about the intersection of popular overseas music culture with New Zealand society, each of them showing a slice of Kiwi kids seeking an identity and a relationship to the world through different ways of dressing, talking, posing and thinking delivered to them through music. British music. The paradox of us looking to another culture to tell us who we are.

And that is indeed one connecting element. But increasingly clear to me, as I walk away from them, is another - that their central characters are all struggling to make a present in the overwhelming shadow of their past; the blame, pain and recrimination that still attaches to them.

And in each case, in each relationship, out of struggle and exhaustion comes hope. And kindness. Which - in the end - are the clothes that love wears.

Don and Phil Everly find a moment for the magic to happen one more time, John Jamieson loses in love but triumphs in fantasy, Julie and Terry pass through the fire but will stay together.

Underneath the songs performed and referenced in them, I hear another music stitching these plays together - a harmony, sweet and stinging, of loss and redemption.

Blue Sky Boys

Wellington 1964 and The Everly Brothers, at a low point professionally and personally, are about to perform in the half empty Buffalo Hall. Across town The Beatles are also performing, but to rapturous crowds. Tensions mount between brothers Phil and Don as two Beatles fans, Fran and Jillian, are unwittingly caught in the crossfire.

John, I’m Only Dancing

Glam gatecrashes an early seventies boys' high as a subversive music teacher turns macho school culture on its head via a staging of David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust.

Waterloo Sunset

The Brits Club - a converted Wellington boathouse where ex-pat Poms and Kiwi punks collide on the night of the 1980 FA Cup Final. Childless couple Terry and Julie find themselves faced with the same burning question as Stormboy, Oik and Cat - if there's No Future, how do you grow up?

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