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Dear sir or madam, will you read my script
It took me years to write, will you take a look
It’s based on a lawyer who is going mad
And I need a job, so I wanna be a play writer
Yes, a play writer
(With apologies to Lennon McCartney)

Lost in Thought
The playwright wasn’t eating and, despite obvious signs of distraction, insisted she wasn’t nervous as the rest of us shared delicious Chinese food in Ye’s Restaurant in St Paul’s Road in Highbury, just around the corner from the Arsenal football ground, and opposite the unusually named Hen and Chicken’s Theatre and Pub. It was the opening night of Lost in Thought, a play, in fact the first play, written by Ro Dalziel, the actress formerly known as Shortland Street’s Beanie Brown. She looked apprehensive and broke her self-imposed restriction from the pre-performance preparations and darted off over the road to the theatre the minute the box office opened.
She need not have been anxious. This play proved to be simply outstanding. Exceptionally well scripted and superbly acted, it is a story about a young lawyer, Megan, who has bi-polar disorder and while preparing for an important case has come off her medication and become confused and disorientated. It examines the effect on her, her boyfriend Ed who didn’t know she had the disorder, and sister Narella who is probably sick of looking after her and would rather party. This is the sort of subject matter that could easily become too intense and earnest but, instead, the play is compelling and deals with the bi-polar condition through clever and entertaining dialogue and direction. It captures with an unusual insight the quirks, the subtle and then dramatic changes in people with this illness so well that it could be from direct experience. It was, from our point of view, a flawless performance, well cast, well directed and a brilliant opening night. Both playwright and sister Lianne, over from New Zealand for the occasion, were positively beaming.
Of course, it should have been good. As we learned from the playwright herself no less, Lost in Thought took ten years to complete which is not very efficient at all by any good market model. Our calculation, in consultation with former Sunday Star Times columnist Raybon Kan, to drop a name, one of a number of Kiwi performers in the audience (and bar afterwards), shows that this equates to only seven minutes of performance time per year. At that rate it may be some time before the sequel.
Then home. An hour and a bit on the Victoria and Central tube lines followed by the E9 bus means we are back in London, jetlagged but here. Our plane from Singapore left more than an hour late on Monday morning, and then was further slowed by a headwind resulting in us missing our connection at Frankfurt and arriving at Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 some four hours late. Still, with T5’s reputation it was a relief to find our baggage had arrived on the same flight, unusual we hear.