Poetry

Glad Rap

The Tupperware Party

Poems Performed and written by Steve Thomas with Music by John Gibson Lounge and Smoking Room

The Tupperware Party is sponsored by the New Zealand Students Arts Council and consists of an evening of poetry [unclear: will] piano accompaniment. Welsh born poet Steve Thomas is currently on tour, working his way back from here to his home base in Dunedin before heading for the Edinburgh Festival. With the aid of John Gibson's music (and occasional prompting), the aim seems to be to provide a sort of Flanders and Swann combination of satiric poetry and suitable accompaniment.

The show has been hailed as a one man masterpiece, but in fact John Gibson's contribution should not be underestimated; this is a team effort, perhaps a little like Sitwell and Walton's Facade.

The poetry itself varies in quality. Like the curate's egg, parts of it are excellent individual lines stick in the mind, like the description of a car as an "angle parked Englishman". This sort of word play seems to be one of Thomas' major skills and his use of words both for sound and for meaning is often elaborate and clever.

Often, however, his poems don't seem quite to come off. In many of the [unclear: comic] poems, the idea is funny, and the verse is clever and pointed, but the poet seems stuck for a punchline. Many of the poems, rather than finishing with their best point, begin with it, and by the end there is nothing to do except to fizzle.

Thomas is not unaware of this problem, and in a couple of pieces tries to keep the pace up, as in his "The Queen's Dream" poem, by throwing in the odd deliberately shocking word. However, when he is good, he is good; the little number about the fur trade, accompanied by "The Teddy Bears' Picnic", and one of the smelter numbers, combined clever rhymes and material as well as one could wish.

As a performer, Thomas has quite a variety of styles, from the Lou Reed pastiche of the second number ("Macho Hombre") to the rattling patter of the "Guide to Dunedin". The selection of poems seems to be on a fairly impromptu basis, and perhaps there is a little too much emphasis on poetry which applies specifically to the Dunedin scene which loses some of its relevance when transplanted to the Lounge and Smoking room at Vic.

Not a brilliant evening, then, but an enjoyable one; helped along more than a little by lashings of wine and beer provided by the bar.

S.D.