Roger Hall’s comedy The Bookclub was updated for The Pumphouse Theatre in May 2018 to a sell out season and was extremely well received by audiences and critics alike.  Starring Jodie Dor-day (Westside, Billy Elliot) and directed by Janice Finn, this popular one-woman play was originally written in 1999 and successfully toured NZ and Australia.  The script has been adapted during this time and the 2018 result is something special.

The Bookclub is narrated by self-confessed book-a-holic Deb who looks for a diversion when the last of her children leaves home and her husband is busy with work and sport.  Loneliness kicks in so she joins a bookclub and meets a diverse group of women ranging from strongly opinionated aca-demic types to fun loving singletons.  But when she invites a local author to talk to the group about his latest book offering, all hell breaks loose.

Roger is the master of writing comedy with pathos and delivering likeable but flawed characters we all recognise and with Jodie Dorday bringing each character to life, it’s a winning combo and a perfor-mance not to be missed.

This one-woman play places extraordinary demands on the narrator and Jodie Dorday rises to the challenge with a finely nuanced and engagingly energetic perfor-mance.   Herald Review May 2018