With Rehab, Elizabeth Cracroft has orchestrated an ensemble dramatisation of scenes from within a rehabilitation centre in Auckland.

Rehab is delivered by an ensemble of 11 residents as their backstories outside the centre and recent experiences from within it are told through a variety of expositional segments guided by the dry comedic timing of Mark Scott as Counsellor Reg.

Though billed as a black comedy, it is predominantly a drama. Additionally, where theatre implies entertainment, this is first and foremost a tool to facilitate a normalisation of a conversation on addiction in the hope that those who need to recover from it take steps towards recovery rather than resign to its grip or bear the guilt, shame and blame that silence on the subject facilitates.

In this regard, Rehab exists as a single piece within a much larger support network required to steer society towards wellbeing and specifically away from substance addiction and its stigma.

If you’re now put off a trip to the PumpHouse Theatre this weekend for fear of either a barrage of mental health info dumping, or an evening of gritty realism, these are not what you would be missing out on.

The message delivery is not preachy, but palatable and despite what one may expect – light.

Smatterings of laughter accompany moments within virtually every scene. Some of the humour is generated through the friction between characters carefully woven into the strictures of group work sessions.

For example, one might express disgust that another has left their dirty underwear in the shower but is not allowed to be offended or directly confront the offender but rather has to identify their own feelings.

Similarly, the person who has indirectly had an aspersion cast upon them may indirectly retort and air their aggrievance under the guise of expressing how violated they feel finding their underwear up a flagpole.

Moments like these were reasonably frequent, particularly in the first half, and stimulated a type of banter-based amusement.

This did rely on character exaggerations which slightly diminished the sincerity but simultaneously widened the audience appeal.

The theatre advises that children do not attend this event, giving it an R18 (R16 with parental/guardian) classification.

Presumably, this is due to the subject matter. However, considering the value of a healthy perception on it, this is not a holistic decision. Most teens would in no way be shocked by anything they witness here, but they could easily leave with a heightened awareness of how substance abuse derails so many lives – even those of their age and younger.

Additionally, and arguably appropriately, they’d be considering the topic without living within or bearing witness to any of the darkest hours.

Furthermore, it is not in any way a substance abuse glamorisation, which is a very easy message to find elsewhere. Perhaps an alternate and progressive approach might be to make this play an optional high school field trip.

There is plenty of content to digest, but it is not harrowing.

The residents do not explore anything like the gamut of themes that this topic seeps into. They do not even have a wide variety of differing struggles – most of them are alcoholics.

Of course, one can isolate nuance within the characters’ stories, but the delivered strokes are broad and not intended to be so fine you need to see it again to receive something different from a closer examination of the monologues and dialogues.

If you did choose to revisit this work, which is now in its seventh season, you’d receive a slightly different iteration of it anyway. The play is, as declared at the conclusion by its creator, a work of improvisation whilst also being a paraphrasing of authentic rehabilitation accounts.

This blend paved the way for some very enjoyable reactionary timing but also dragged out some other scenes that became a little vacuous.

The lighting technicians seemed deployed to cater for this by dimming out scenes when it seemed right to move on rather than having typical fixed scene conclusions.

This resulted in some of the best quip throw away remarks from Counsellor Reg as he sought to follow some kind of system and implement some kind of order to the relational-dynamic–chaos that accompanies a set of voluntarily trapped stir crazy adults dutifully enduring rehabilitation.

Some of these moments felt like a portrayal of a type of boarding school with a bit of naughtiness thrown in to ruffle the feathers of Reg, who continually tried to realign the groups’ wayward thoughts.

Mark Scott really delivered his part well. He managed ineptitude, loose control, cutting remarks, wisdom and even badly reigning the group in with exceptionally well-timed dry wit.

He also added some quirks, such as fancying himself as a poet, which drew many laughs.

Even if he was the glue, he was by no means the only essential performance. Nor, as stated earlier, is this work predominantly comedy.

Most of the deepest moments of sincerity came later in the show.

Dorsa Nassiry expressed her feelings on double standards with a tone and language that really felt like the logic of her 19-year-old character, Yasmin.

Another notable moment of sincerity came from Paul Paice as meth addict Gus. He reached into his vulnerability and shared a stabbing sense of suffering at the unredeemable loss of time that was his past, stemming from childhood but still so very present in relation to quality time and his granddaughter.

This powerful delivery came from one of the many duologues that interspersed the group scenes, allowing us to go a little deeper into the lives of the residents.

During the scene changes, taped audio recordings of each of the residents and the counsellor, himself a former resident, played.

Each was a moment of expressed acceptance to a disposition prior to entering the facility.

These were named, poignant and captured with a variety of outside sounds giving each a sense of specific placement.

There is nothing that explicitly stated these were the tipping points where rehab was selected over a destructive cycle, but they felt as if they were. They were also a very effective sound variation to the evening.

Aside from the very last scene, all the remainder of this work’s audio was delivered through wireless microphones. Unfortunately, though these were not visually notable, the sound mix itself was accompanied by some interference and the fading in was often late.

This was a little frustrating at times, but not nearly as frustrating as the totally jarring in house music chosen for the interval. I suspect that this was not something the production chose, as it was completely disruptive to what the play was instilling and leaving the audience to ruminate over.

I hope these were simply opening night teething issues that will be ironed out.

Ultimately, Rehab could be a more polished work. It could be more insightful and carry a greater depth of message whilst still entirely remaining within its setting and characters, but it has not been set up to be that way.

Its casual approach to the topic is not callous or careless, but an unapologetic device showing that this conversation does not need to be technical or precise, but simply open and available.

This is praiseworthy, even if Rehab alone cannot right all our social wrongs. It is at least continually dripping its normalisation message through the filter paper of those that hear it and share it.

Whether this will ever reach the critical mass required to socially overcome destructive addictions is a matter for time to tell, but it is a comfort to know that a troop of performers care enough to realise a show like this.

Giles Wynn