Hauraki Horror is the least Christmasy Christmas show the Basement has produced, and it’s their funniest one yet.

Written by and starring Chris Parker and Tom Sainsbury as a pair of dim-witted would-be gossip queens, Hauraki Horror serves us a murder mystery set on a cruise ship loaded with a handful of easily-parodied New Zealand celebrities. With the exception of Sainsbury and Parker in the lead roles, characters are played each night by a cast pulled from a 50-strong rotating roster of Auckland’s theatrical talent, including Barnie Duncan, Jennifer Ward-Lealand and Olivia Tennet.

Sainsbury and Parker are brilliant here, delivering an absolute tour de force of self-aware meta-panto. Parker is effervescent, constantly finding new depths of absurdity to plumb as he mispronounces words and discovers outrageous tones to adopt for a line or two before discarding them as if they never existed. Like walking a tightrope he effortlessly pulls off the kind of comedic acrobatics that should be impossible. He’s a wonder. Beside him, Sainsbury’s idiot sidekick belies an extremely intelligent performance. He displays an astute understanding of convention and stagecraft as he drives the action and never misses a chance to subvert our expectations.

The pair take the show on their backs and carry it with ease. They feel fresh, while simultaneously showing they’re well-versed in their chosen genre and most of all they’re brilliantly weird. The crowds may come for the various celebrities who are stepping out for a couple of shows, but they’ll stay for these two.

The plot kicks off when the boat’s millionaire Captain, Dick Rancid, takes a harpoon to the chest, and our duo of burgeoning gossip columnists set out to get the scoop on who the killer is. Thus kicks off a journey though a melange of New Zealand B-grade figures, some overworn, others delightfully surreal. I question a few of the choices here. A couple of characters felt particularly irrelevant, and the very notion of parodying our celebrity culture feels like the low-hanging fruit of stage comedy. The show was at its best when it was gazing deeply into its own bizarro belly, and on opening night this was best exemplified by Barnie Duncan as the enigmatic Kelly Tarlton (of aquarium fame). Duncan’s portrayal of Tarlton as a sort of autistic Dr Frank N. Furter, forever finding peculiar angles to play and perfectly settling into the weirdo tone Parker and Sainsbury established.

It’s not perfect. As is the nature of this sort of work, it ends up feeling episodic as it moves from cameo to cameo. The show’s tone tires a bit towards the end, and the climax is pretty anti-climactic. The ending especially could do with some work: it shoots for a clever wink but comes off as an underworked cop-out including a literal deus ex machina that feels like a real letdown after the whimsical fun that’s come before it.

The cast changes every night so it’s a bit of a crapshoot, but there are plenty of talented actors and comedians on the roster and more than enough comedy in the writing to keep you entertained - and the charmingly shambolic delivery should appeal to fans of the Basement’s wares.

Hauraki Horror plays at the Basement Theatre from 4-20 December
Tickets available through iTicket See also:Janet McAllister for the NZ HeraldJames Wenley for Theatre Scenes