The atmosphere inside the Stage is haunting.

Candles litter the stage. A lone guitarist sits in the corner, plucking on both strings and hearts. The audience’s volume level is a little more subdued than normal in respect of the ambience that Laenye Productions has set up.

Then she enters.

A ghostly, overworldly presence darkens the stage door. She is La Catrina, an ancestor/character prominent in South American folklore. She takes both her time and her steps slowly. This is her time, not yours. Her beautiful voice sings out in Spanish, a soft terror forming in my heart. I’m not certain of the details she’s giving us but that only serves to draw me in further, like I’m being challenged to interpret her slow, purposeful movements. I’m enthralled.

She takes her place on the side of stage and remains there, seated.

For a format-heavy show, very little is explained. Our three performers, Daniel Fernández, China González and Matías Avaca, barely introduce themselves before approaching La Catrina. She hands them cards which they hold up to the audience to see. Some are green with roses. Some are red with skulls. We are not told what they mean. Again, what we are presented with is up to us to interpret and decipher.

I love this sort of thing. La Catrina trusts its audience to listen, and in turn, the audience trusts the show to reveal itself throughout the night.

Scenes play out. The improvised story of a tailor in a failing shop with the pressures of modern society closing in on them. Each scene is punctuated with another round of cards dealt. Different performers receive different cards each time, and the scenes play out accordingly. Scarves are hung up on coat racks, then picked up and worn, seemingly randomly at first, but the intent becomes clear after a few rounds. All at once, the format clicks into place.

Each scene is played out with authenticity. This is not a localised show. A niece refers to her uncle as Tio, and makes references to her Abuela. The music is heavily latin-inspired. The audience is being invited in to witness this art-form but we dare not ham up the drama with ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’. We are here to look, not touch. You can see at the end of a scene, when the guitarist replays his beautiful motif, hands are raising to applaud. But nobody does. To do so would break the immersion, for themselves and for everybody else. We hold fire on our applause until it is safe to do so. We do not stain the atmosphere with clapping until the curtain call.

González has a wonderful playful energy as a wild-eyed niece who seeks to preserve her family’s future. Her waxing poetic of hope and fire is captivating, as is her mischievous interaction with the rest of the cast. She oscillates between joy and sadness in a heart-breaking performance that plays perfectly against the hardness of Avaca’s stern-yet-loving father character. Avaca constantly plays a delightful game in which he is restricted from saying the things he truly wants to say, but it is always obvious to the audience what he truly wants. Fernández forces the audience to mirror his expressions of pain, tragedy and desperation in an excellent performance that had me tearing up at the mere sound of his voice. His generosity on-stage is boundless, making offers to his partners and ensuring that every scene he’s in holds an emotional weight that few can carry.

Around the halfway mark, once everybody’s figured out the format, La Catrina pulls up its sleeves.

And now it reveals the tricks within.

Seemingly all at once, the format is flipped on its head, both narratively and mechanically. Our musician hits the loop pedal below his guitar and creates soundscapes with nothing but the sounds of his guitar. The players move scarves in ways that should be illegal. Players move into areas that force Avaca to demand things of characters that we thought were out of bounds. It’s so difficult to describe without spoiling the magic, because that’s what it is. It’s a bewitching illusion that might only work once, but it’s executed to the highest order.

Meanwhile La Catrina has been sitting aside, watching, judging, even directing in the most subtle of manners. Every now and then, she gives a cheeky micro-expression that reminds us that the entire show is improvised by performers at the height of their trade. Once the story reaches her conclusion, she stands back up to close out the show and leads the cast out into darkness.

Only now is it safe for the thunderous applause to manifest throughout the theatre.

My jaw is hanging from its loose hinges. La Catrina is triumph of sincerity that proves beyond doubt the value and importance of connection on-stage. The way that the show invites the audience to figure it out for themselves, and trusts that they’ll find the answer by the time they upheave the narrative is genius.

Actually, genius isn’t quite the right word. It’s magical.

Disclosure: As a somewhat active member of the Wellington improv community, I am quite familiar with some of the performers in this show.
Having said that, I am not a liar, and there is zero bias in my reviews, shut up.