CELEBRATED THEATREMAKERS HONOUR THE TIMELESS VOICE OF BRUCE MASON

Circa Theatre and Brilliant Adventures present
EVERY KIND OF WEATHER
The End of the Golden Weather and Not Christmas, but Guy Fawkes by Bruce Mason
 
Celebrating one of the most significant playwrights in our country’s history, Bruce Mason, two contemporary legends of Aotearoa theatre have created a brilliant homage to his extraordinary legacy in Every Kind of Weather, coming to Wellington’s Circa Theatre from 20 November – 13 December. Director Shane Bosher and actor Stephen Lovatt offer audiences the chance to see two of Mason’s most beloved solo works - The End of the Golden Weather and Not Christmas, but Guy Fawkes - performed in repertory.
 
A prolific writer, Bruce Mason had a unique ability to create spellbinding stories from the regular lives of Kiwis, earning a CBE in 1980 for his contributions. Consistently a champion of the underdog, his works explored identity, difference, and cultural cringe; they took Mason from community halls in Aotearoa’s smallest towns to the Edinburgh Festival.
 
Chronicling the friendship between a 12-year-old boy and Firpo, a social outcast who dreams of winning an Olympic medal, The End of the Golden Weather invites us to see the wonder of life on a perfect 1930s New Zealand beach, during a perfect summer. The quintessential Kiwi classic, arguably Bruce Mason’s best-known solo work, was performed by the playwright himself nearly 1,000 times. Before the country had a professional theatre and while struggling to make ends meet, Mason famously first performed it on a beach in 1959. A poignant meditation on lost innocence after the Great Depression, this ever-relevant work grapples with what it means to be a New Zealander, gliding effortlessly between flights of poetic fancy and blunt everyday speech.

The iconic work has also become part of Stephen Lovatt’s legacy as an actor – first in Murray Lynch’s 1990 ensemble version alongside Cliff Curtis, Robyn Malcolm, and Theresa Healey, before his 2006 solo version toured around Aotearoa and to Edinburgh. That same year, as a gift to the community, Lovatt began his Christmas morning tradition of performing an early section from the play ‘Christmas at Te Parenga’ on Takapuna Beach, where Mason grew up.

Its companion piece, Not Christmas, but Guy Fawkes, was staged towards the end of the playwright’s life and has never been performed by anyone other than Mason himself. The play is a series of cautionary tales following an adolescent boy navigating an adult-dominated world, a young man and his childhood bully, and a playwright in his final days reflecting on art and New Zealand identity. A richly autobiographical search for self-expression, it cheekily confronts New Zealand’s very own Tall Poppy Syndrome.

“His psychological profiling sets a standard for revealing human nature and experience in its ‘warts and all’ glory, which his audience is free to engage with through empathy, judgement or both.”  – John Smythe, The Plays of Bruce Mason

Every Kind of Weather builds on a shared canon between frequent collaborators Bosher and Lovatt that includes Long Day’s Journey into Night (2022), Everything After (2021), the critically acclaimed sell-out Things I Know to Be True (2021), Angels in America (2014) and When the Rain Stops Falling (2010) which earned Lovatt ‘Best Male Performance’ in the 2010 Herald, Herald on Sunday, and The Listener Awards. Lovatt and Bosher return to Circa for a not-to-be missed theatrical encounter with a master craftsman.

Stephen also has an impressive list of on screen credits including Neighbours, Ash vs Evil Dead and The Making of the Mob. ​​For the last three years, Stephen has played Shortland Street's Emmett Whitman, the emergency doctor who has a history of rubbing everyone the wrong way.

With two pieces that bookend his career, this double shot of Bruce Mason is a fitting tribute to a man that changed theatre in this country forever.

EVERY KIND OF WEATHER plays:
Circa Theatre, Wellington
Thursday 20 November to Saturday 13 December
Preview Night: Wed 19 Nov – The End of the Golden Weather
Preview Night: Fri 21 Nov – Not Christmas, But Guy Fawkes
Tues – Fri 7.30pm, Sat 4.30pm & 7.30pm, Sun 4.30pm
Tickets on sale from 20 September via Circa Theatre
Productions play on alternate nights with an opportunity to see both productions in conversation with each other on Saturdays.
 
CREDITS
Playwright: Bruce Mason
Director: Shane Bosher
Performer: Stephen Lovatt