In his novel The Stranger, Albert Camus casts the sun, early and often, as an aggressor. It’s an unrelenting and oppressive force that brings his characters and their bases to the boil, allowing what Camus saw as their true humanity to surface.

The Outfit Theatre Company’s SIN also begins with the indictment of a heatwave, though in this case it’s meaningless: something frivolously mentioned but never expressed physically, or thematically, by any characters other than newscaster (Kate Vox) who brings it up once or twice. I’m at a loss as to why it was brought up at all, especially when the weather seems so flippant (after the phantom heatwave is seemingly forgotten, there’s a sudden severe thunderstorm which comes out of nowhere). I only really quibble with the weather because it embodies the narrative issues which ultimately stunt the potential of the Outfit’s latest and arguably most ambitious work. Everything is happening, but it’s happening for no reason or it’s coming on so suddenly that it misses the mark.

The play follows a series of interrelated threads. An entrepreneur hooks up with a beautician, whose client is a fairy, who also works at a call centre with a would-be clown and a lesbian, who is dating a newsreader. A married couple plan their child’s fifth birthday party and are harangued by a charity worker whose co-workers include a man with a problematically undefined mental disorder of some kind (his sister is the fairy) and a bleeding heart with an eating disorder (I’m not sure equating an eating disorder with the sin of gluttony is okay), whose boyfriend is some kind of scientist, who attends his brother’s (from the couple with the child) dinner party (where he meets the newsreader and the entrepreneur). There’s also a jealous friend (we know he’s jealous already but he also has a computer with bathes him in green light). It sounds confusing, but Director Sarah Graham has spaced them out well and the connections and the actual storylines are easy to follow. Unfortunately, and possibly as a result of the gargantuan nature of the show, many of the stories and characters feel underdeveloped. Things happen. A lot happens. But we’re not always sure why and as a result, they become meaningless. We stop caring about them, which makes the 150-minute long running time hard going, and by the time climactic scenes come to fruition, rather than packing any kind of punch, it all seems absurd.

The ambition is to be applauded for sure, but without an underpinning of subtlety, thoughtfulness and depth, it doesn’t really amount to much.

The Outfit Theatre Company have previously built up a good reputation as purveyors of devised ensemble theatre on a range of inflammatory themes, along with their hugely successful kids shows and anarchic Christmas pieces. They’re at their best when they’re exploiting their vast company’s strengths: energy, youth, humour, and the desire to be a bit naughty. They’ve previously proven themselves to be masters or conjuring cartoon characters and pushing them to their cartoonish extremes. Here though, in SIN, their cartoons look all the more one-dimensional because of the seriousness of the world they’ve concocted, and the professional context of having made the leap to Q’s cavernous Rangatira main stage. Because of that. they often come across as cloying, which ultimately inhibits the company from achieving the pathos it hoped to with its climax. For a play that’s so concerned with 'humanity', there’s an alarming lack of it.

It’s disappointing, because I’d love to see the Outfit's talent and ambition cohesively meet at their potential. Their desire to actively seek out New Zealand stories and present them (mining from their audience through the use of surveys and questionnaires) is fantastic. But it seems that while the scope of their shows from a production standpoint continues to rise exponentially, it feels as though they’re resting on their research modes, ensemble form, and want for ‘edginess’ as narrative crutches, leaving them exposed and with the threat of feeling gimmicky. They have a lot of good ideas, and the ever-expanding scope of their ensemble should allow for the elbow grease required to realise their ambition - what's now needed is for them to apply the same rigour they display in their research - and in the discovery and development of new talent - to their dramaturgy and writing.

SIN is a big play. Two and a half hours long, with a cast of fourteen, in Q’s biggest space. The play’s climactic moments include mammoth, fatal implications. The ambition is to be applauded for sure, but without an underpinning of subtlety, thoughtfulness and depth, it doesn’t really amount to much. A big puff of steam that comes from nowhere and evaporates into nothing. There’s no denying the Outfit Theatre Company has a swag of talented performers and makers, but here those talented minds, like the narrative of SIN, seem fractured and apart.

SIN plays at Q Theatre from 9– 18 July
Tickets available through Q Theatre

See also:
Paul Simei-Barton for New Zealand Herald
James Wenley for Theatre Scenes