Who Needs Sleep Anyway?

September 26-29 Clarence St Theatre Written by Roger Hall and Pip Hall.

BRINGING UP BABY?

Got a young family? Ever had a young family? Then you know all the sleepless nights are worth it in the end.

Or, as New Zealand's best known and most successful playwright Roger Hall says, Who Needs Sleep Anyway?

Hamilton City Theatres brings this Downstage Theatre production to the Clarence St Theatre for a strictly limited season at the end of September as is the final offering in its subscription series Season07.

Joining forces with daughter Pip, Roger Hall's new work Who Needs Sleep Anyway celebrates 100 years of bringing up babies in New Zealand - under the auspices of Plunket! If you grew up in New Zealand during the last hundred years, and if you had, have or are even thinking about having, a young family then this is theatre designed with you in mind.

It's full chuckles, memories, lots of irreverence and is guaranteed to send you home with a smile on your face, and a glow inside. Just because, in one-way or another and whether you like it or not, Plunket touched you.

Roger Hall has concentrated on the history, teaching us about the appallingly high death rate among babies a century ago, about humanised milk and vaccinations, baby farming and Karitane nurses, while Pip has woven through it all a contemporary tale of a young couple depending on Plunket to help them raise Baby P to the stage where they can wave him off to school. In turns hilarious, wonderful and emotional - rather like parenthood really. Who Needs Sleep Anyway? guarantees a fun filled evening of frolics and frivolity, hysterics and history, songs and satire in a joyful celebration of our heritage.

Director
Susan Wilson

Designer
John Hodgson
Lisa Maule
Zoe Fox

Featuring
Jennifer Ludlam
Jane Waddell
Peter Hambleton
Mel Dodge
Paul McLaughlin
Nick Dunbar

ends