Albert Black

ALBERT BLACK

Jukebox killer

"Young love will kick the chairs about and like a rush fire burn" - James K Baxter

ALBERT BLACK is a riotous new kiwi play based on notorious love crimes that triggered a moral panic in post-war New Zealand. Ripped from the scandalous headlines of the day, we need your help to turn The Basement theatre into the seedy heart of Auckland in the 50s, costume our large cast, and arm them with props!

Based on actual characters and events, ALBERT BLACK chronicles the fiery emergence of New Zealand's first teenagers in the 1950s. It's a Kiwi Rebel Without A Cause, set amongst - as one newspaper described it at the time - "a wasteland of warring juveniles, delinquents, teenage sex, no parental supervision, all-night dives, blaring jukeboxes - even a cult built around the banned books of Mickey Spillane. "

Vivid as a comic book, the play follows Belfast immigrant Albert Black - a frowned on Bodgie - as he scrapes by in the conservative and surreal New Zealand of the mid-fifties... a country in the grip of a crime wave which could have been ripped from the pages of one of Spillane's hard boiled paperbacks: the Parker-Hulme murder, the Milk Bar Murder and the notorious Jukebox Killing that led Albert to his tragic demise.

Based on Redmer Yska's "All Shook Up:the Flash Bodgie and the Rise of the New Zealand Teenager in the 1950s', the play explores the causes and effects of the Sidney Holland led New Zealand Government's infamous "Mazengarb Report" into juvenile delinquency. "In the 50s New Zealand went through a classic moral panic" says playwright Peter Larsen, "Albert Black guides us through the hysteria of the times as absurd politics and social mores reap their strange and dreadful fruit".

Produced in association with the New Zealand Youth Theatre Company the play celebrates how teenagers remade our world. Featuring a large cast of professional and emerging actors, ALBERT BLACK is the story of NZ's first teenagers as they struggled to find - often with disastrous consequences - their place in our society; a place where every young person can now enjoy freedom and independence.

So blame rock and roll. Blame slick-back heart throb James Dean. Blame the pulp fiction of Mickey Spillane. Called "Riotous, shocking and thought-provoking" by theatreview, ALBERT BLACK is a ripping yarn as entertaining as it is insightful.

Get tickets HERE!

Written by Peter Larsen

Directed by Jarrod Martin

Cast:

Dan Veint, Jackson Bliss-McCauley, Alistair Browning, Seamus Ford, Sophia Johnson, Abigail Laurent, Rachel Nicholls, Claudia Nixon, Preston O'Brien, Ruby Payne, Ashlee Rayes, Vanderal Talagi, Lane Twigden, Devon Webb, Courtney Yanez.