The Nannas And The Poppas – Q Theatre February 21, 2017

The history of the Fringe Festival can be traced back to Edinburgh 1947, when eight theatre companies gatecrashed  the city’s inaugural International Culture Festival.

Since its naissance, the Fringe Festival ethos of expression, inclusion, and experimentation has made it a hotbed for amateur and professional creatives alike. Despite the “Fringe” tag, the festival has launched several notable careers including Monty Python, Stephen Fry, and the Mighty Boosh.
In a country as small as New Zealand, the hierarchy and bullshit that can be found across any creative sector can seem concentrated at times, leading to infighting, false platitudes or worse of all, bad art- usually it’s a combination of the three.

But the Fringe Festivals dotted up and down our country cut through all of the drama, levelling out the playing field and stripping the trappings of the creative world away to its purest and most powerful form- expression of our self and our world.

Last night was Auckland Fringe Festival’s opening night, and one of its opening acts being a Blackbird Production called The Nannas and the Poppas First Gig Ever.

Beamed straight from 2067, these geriatric rockers spend 55 minutes performing their takes on Beyonce, Michael Jackson, and a few original flows. The novelty of watching twenty somethings in grey wigs with the parlance of Catherine Tate’s Nan and taking their fashion cues from a fabulously bad taste party was expertly juxtaposed against subtle  truth bombs dropped throughout the show, giving it a quietly universal depth.

Director Claire Cowan and Emma Eden gave stand out performances. Their comedic timing and commitment to the physicality of their characters was impeccable. That they both maintained the joyous charisma of a grandmother who has had one too many sherries was almost a bonus. Highlights included the Kitty Rap– extolling the virtues of the lesbian dream of being a cat lady, a homage to single ladies, and a fantasy involving Helen Clarke and a red blazer.

What the performance as a whole did so well is that in its own way, it brought older people out of the shadows and into the limelight with fun and dignity. In a society that values youth, the elderly are so often overlooked. The Nannas and The Poppas gently reminded us that (all going well) we too will all age. Not only do we need to embrace our vitality our hopes and dreams now, we need to acknowledge previous generations for shaping us. Given that each performer proudly displayed photos of their own grandparents on the stage, The Nannas and The Poppas was both an expression of self and our world to come.

Kate Powell