Roger Hall’s End of Summertime
17 Jun – 5 Jul 2025
ASB Waterfront Theatre, Auckland
Tickets available HERE.

“Hot town, summer in the city…” booms as the house lights go down and the red velvet curtains of the ASB Waterfront Theatre go up. And there stands the kiwi every-bloke, Dickie Hart. Yes, South Island cow-cocky Dickie Hart who we met in “C’mon Black,” when he travelled to see the All Blacks lose to South Africa in 1995. And who left the farm with his wife Glenda and moved to Wellington in 1999’s You Gotta Be Joking. Playwright Sir Roger Hall has brought Dickie to Auckland, to the North Shore, to retire in an apartment!

It was Glenda’s idea. The kids and grandchildren were in Auckland and she was tired of commuting to be with them. Dickie can’t stand any of it, all the people, the traffic, the immigrants, the flirty neighbour – and it doesn’t even have a good footie team! Grumpy old man! But as he learns his way around, gets a HOP card, discovers the beauty of Auckland, makes connections, he realises he loves it here. Not that he’d give up complaining, mind you.

Andrew Grainger wears Dickie like a comfy old cardy, embodying the crusty old coot – he’s you, your husband, father, grandfather, uncle… He’s charming, playful, sharp witted… Problem is, you’ve heard all his stories before, you know the punchlines… Grainger’s in it all the way, and there are genuine laughs, heaps of guffaws; but the trope of the crusty old boomer struggling as he settles into a very comfortable retirement has been wrung dry.

Roger Hall has been plumbing its depths for years, most recently in 2020’s Winding Down, where a couple has settled into genteel retirement and are coping with a potentially dire medical diagnosis. It was brilliant – the dialog so real it felt like Hall had snuck a tape recorder into my apartment and captured my husband and me bickering. But it had a hook, a crisis. Forty-five minutes into End of Summertime and there is no hook. It’s forty-five minutes of an old man grumbling.

Then Dickie says, “Things were bad enough, then Covid struck!”

The curtain fell and we shuffled to the lobby to grab a wine. My companion and I shared a few awkward moments of silence. I was pondering how I was going to write this review. Roger Hall is a legend, of that there is no doubt. He’s been churning out hit after hit since 1976: plays, musicals, pantomimes; for stage and screen. I have seen and loved so much of his work. End of Summertime is semi-autobiographical, and I can’t help but wonder if maybe he was too close to his own experience and the depth of his memories as he wrote this play.

We return to our seats and hear the melancholy of the Beatles’ Nowhere Man. Dickie resumes his monologue. On Covid. “China built a hospital in ten days. Why don’t we get ‘em over here? Do our roads!” Complaints about masks, hand-washing, cruises cancelled, Glenda couldn’t get her hair done… lockdowns, vaccinations…

Then, at last, we get the twist and End of Summertime evolves into an exploration of the loneliness and isolation older people experienced during lockdown. Dickie despairs, the apartment is a mess. Without all the people and things he loves, what is life?

Yes! I am rapt. This is not a tired old trope. This is vivid, palpable. This is the play I wish Hall had written. Yes, we saw the statistics and the tragic loss of the elderly on TV every night – the young and fit reporting on the old and vulnerable. But here, in the second half of the play we see and feel the reality. The grief, the loss, the wry black humour. And ultimately, the reinvention of life and return of hope in the aftermath. It literally brought me tears. And Andrew Grainger gets his chance to shine.

If this had been a one act play, cutting about 30 minutes from the first half, I’d be crying “Bravo!”

Production was exceptional, as we’ve come to expect from The Auckland Theatre Company. The very versatile Alison Quigan directed; last time I saw her she was playing the wife in Hall’s Winding Up. John Parker created another of his gorgeous spare-but-sparkling sets. Philip Dexter designed the lighting. Sean Lynch did another remarkable job on sound design (following his spectacular work on the ATC season opener, Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.)

Roger Hall’s End of Summertime
17 Jun – 5 Jul 2025
ASB Waterfront Theatre, Auckland
Tickets available HERE.

Veronica McLaughlin