Happiness reigns with the return of Christchurch’s Court.
After the year that was in Christchurch, many of us are looking for shortcuts to happiness. On the opening night of both the Court Theatre’s stunning new facility – an old 
granary in Addington – and Roger Hall’s latest play, the Court team delivered one. Pre-performance, the Shed’s cavernous foyer was packed with glittering, theatre-deprived patrons and a fair bit of happiness. Post-performance, things got even happier.
A Shortcut to Happiness is classic Roger Hall with plenty of zeitgeist-mocking gags – Skype, My Sky, Facebook and senior discounts – a cast of loveable losers and a plot that veers between farce and realism.
Natasha, a Russian immigrant and music teacher, is trying to make a living cleaning houses and running folk-dancing classes in a school hall. Enter a motley crew of “seniors” – the recently widowed Ned, the loose-lipped, desperately lonely Coral, old friends Janet and Laura, and seriously odd couple Bev and Ray – who turn up to Natasha’s classes hoping to find shortcuts to happiness through dancing. And in typical Hall style, they all find it – after a few kerfuffles, of course, and not always in the places they expected to.
Gumbley directs Hall’s play warmly, respectfully, but also fleshes out his plot with skilful staging and some nice flourishes, including Matt Hudson’s delightful dancing school caretaker.
The music and dancing is fun, but the production really belongs to the actors. Ali Harper holds the piece together – seemingly effortlessly – with her passionate, stroppy, sexy and completely convincing Natasha. Even Hall’s occasionally clunky one-liners sound sincere – almost profound – delivered by Harper’s Russian and very real Natasha.
Jude Gibson and Tim Bartlett also stand out as the co-dependent senior class/course junkies Bev and Ray. They dress in matching outfits and Bev speaks for Ray, and despite the fact Ray has no lines and no one listens to Bev, both are fully dimensional, hilarious characters created from caricatures. Bruce Phillips’s Ned is less credible and less engaging, however, which makes the ending and his particular shortcut to happiness harder to swallow.
The Court lives again despite its stores of costumes, props, technical equipment and archives being inaccessible and unable to be assessed or claimed for until the old theatre building is deemed stable, which makes the professionalism and enthusiasm of this production even more remarkable.
A SHORTCUT TO HAPPINESS, by Roger Hall, directed by Ross Gumbley, Court Theatre, Christchurch, until January 28.