Reviews

Excerpt from “Just Who Does He Think He Is?  By George Webby (Steele Roberts publishing, 2006 page 289)

• I had one of my happiest productions when I directed Ray Lawlor’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll at Downstage, although it is not easy to say why one production gives more pleasure than another.  I was working with old friends, for the most part, and the job is made so much easier when the cast and director are happy with the other’s approach.  Of those new to me, Patrick Wilson and Brian Sergent, I want to single out Brian because it was the first time that I had worked with this actor of undoubted ability, and I was looking forward to it.  Like Pat Evison, Brian has had his share of being directed by those who know less than he about that job, thought he, notoriously, hasn’t been shy in letting them know how he felt.  I have admired just about everything I have seen him do, but his own self-doubt sometimes comes between him and those he is working with.  He joins my small pantheon of actors that earn my total admiration for their contribution to their craft. As it turns out, his role in this play is crucial to its success, and I needed him to do more ‘walk through’ the play.  I need not have worried.

NZ Listener by Harry Ricketts:

• “However, the play really takes off with the appearance of working-class Mike (Brian Sergent), who becomes a reluctant stand-in for Wynne’s missing partner after crashing his van in the fog outside.  As an actor, Sergent always exudes waves of exciting unpredictability, and this role allows him to set up plenty of cross-currents as Mike asserts himself against the power games of the rich tossers. Then, near the end, Mike shows the childless Paige his daughter’s photo and adds: “She lives with her mum, but I see her a lot.” Among all the excoriating wit, Sergent manages to extract an extraordinary poignancy from this simple line”

Capital Times by Lynn Freeman:

• “Laughs also come thick and fast for Brian Sergent, typecast as the loose cannon that is Mike but doing it brilliantly”

John Smythe: Theatre reviews:

DINNER: comedy with bite

• “Stuck-in-a-ditch van-driver Mike, the uninvited guest, keeps everyone guessing in the challenging, wily and sardonic persona of Brian Sergent."

Dominion by Timothy O'Brien:

• “Saturday night gave the Australians a win with Circa's production of this award-winning play by Andrew Bovell. Intriguing, complex, glamorous and mysterious, Speaking in Tongues is a tour de force of writing that demands, and here gets, performances equal to its bravura. The four actors, including Brian Sergent, excellently play nine parts among them. Each of these is part of a couple whose lives are woven together, ultimately around a mystery. Whether or not they're all implicated in the mysterious disappearance of a woman whose car broke down one night is one of the issues the play suggests we should be thinking about.”

“Look Out He’s Got A Knife”  (posted by Pearce)

• “Just saw Brian Sergent’s playwriting debut, The Love of Humankind. I guessed it would be foul, smelly, verbally explicit and hilarious and it was. It’s based on two real-life Wellington characters that Sergent knew, Mark Smith and Brian Bell. Smith (underplayed brilliantly by Ken Blackburn) keeps his moniker, but Bell is renamed Rodney Pump –and with Sergent playing the role himself he lives up to that glorious name. Presumably the name change was to distance Brian the actor from Brian the character, but this is exactly the sort of role Sergent excels at, and this is the best I’ve seen him since Ross Jolly’s production of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming.”

NZ Listener by Harry Ricketts:

• THE LOVE OF HUMANKIND, Brian Sergent; directed by Danny Mulheron, Circa Theatre, Wellington (to February 21). It's hard to resist a play that opens with “Desolation Row”, Bob Dylan’s great hymn of witty despair. The first-night audience at Circa’s The Love of Humankind was in no mood to resist and often laughed so much that it was difficult to catch the lines. The play is based on the friendship between Brian Bell and Mark Smith, two Wellington characters who died a few years ago pickled with booze. Sergent, who knew the pair, wrote the excellent script and takes the part of Bell – whom he rather oddly rechristens Rodney Pump while permitting Smith (Ken Blackburn) to keep his own name. In Sergent’s version, Pump and Smith make a formidable duo. Pump’s forte is social bile and pungent misogynism, spiked with personal invective – a combination that, like some foul-mouthed Peter Cook, he has turned into a minor art form. (Other real-life/ theatrical antecedents for Pump probably include the famous London columnist and drunk Jeffrey Bernard, immortalised by Peter O’Toole in Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell.) Pump’s sidekick Smith is more low-key (Dud to his Pete, perhaps), but not without his own verbal and other resources, as we discover from the unusual role he assigns to his dead budgie. It is Smith’s 70th birthday party in his ex-council flat. (Nic Smillie’s splendidly scungy set allows us to sense the cockroaches, smell the mould.) Pump provides the vodka and the abuse; his literary friend Annie (Anne Budd) chips in with the Viagra. Messianic-depressive Malcolm (Paul McLaughlin) brings along the “jazz cigarettes” and, a special treat, a stripper called Trixie (Narelle Ahrens), whose routine includes a song entitled “You’ll Root Again”. At first it’s funny, sometimes hilarious. The performances are as sharp as a tack, with Sergent and Blackburn quite brilliant as the “cynical pustule” Pump and the laconically lugubrious Smith. But some way before halftime – though the pace and scurrility never slacken – it all starts to wear a bit thin. After all, inventive expletives and verbal cruelty will only take you so far. Fortunately, things get much darker and gloomier in the second half, which means they also get much better. As the vodka hits home, Pump overreaches himself and Malcolm strikes back. The more Pump comes apart at the seams, the more his loneliness and self-loathing show through, and the more it becomes possible to feel some sympathy for him. (He’s still a monster, of course, but now a self-professedly damaged one, which makes all the difference.) By the neatly managed conclusion, Sergent, both as dramatist and actor, had pulled off a remarkable tour de force. He thoroughly deserved his standing ovation.

Outrageous Fortune website:

• “Outrageous Fortune series II, Brian Sergent stars again in this wonderful, award winning television series as Eric.”

Playmarket by Mark Amery:

• "If you ever needed convincing that experienced actors can have the requisite instinct for playwriting, look no further than Brian Sergent. After years treading the Circa boards, Sergent premiered his debut, the comedy The Love of Humankind, in January at Circa, and had them beating their way to the theatre´s door. Directed by Danny Mulheron, and part of ATC´s monthly playreading series last year, Sergent got 2004 off to a very good start. We join acid-tongued Rodney and friends in a run-down ex-council flat to celebrate fellow alcoholic Mark Smith´s 70th birthday, with vodka, ´jazz cigarettes´ and a stripper called Trixie. “By the neatly managed conclusion,” comments Listener critic Harry Ricketts, “Sergent, both as dramatist and actor, has pulled off a remarkable tour de force. He thoroughly deserved his standing ovation.”

From NZ Playwrights :

• “Hailed as one of New Zealand's greatest comic actors, Brian Sergent is a familiar face on both stage and screen. His quick wit and sharp comedic timing have stood him in good stead for his various roles; in Roger Hall´s play Take a Chance on Me and in the television shows Market Forces and Skitz. However, Brian is not only a comedian. He is also able to bring a serious and sometimes sinister edge to his characters, which he has been able to display in such roles as Iago in Othello and in the films Via Satellite and Lord of the Rings.”

Standing ovation for comedy with heart Reviewed by Laurie Atkinson in The Dompost, Tuesday 27th Jan, 2004:

• "On Saturday Circa kicked off its theatrical year with a mordant and scurrilously funny comedy that was rapturously received by the first-night audience, many of whom gave a standing ovation for its writer and leading actor Brian Sergent. Set in a Wellington suburb, which is described as a whole psychiatric department, The Love of Human Kind depicts a simple birthday party spinning out of control as it is sucked into a vortex of the characters' own making through vodka, vindictiveness, love, bile, tall tales and loneliness. Mark is turning 70 and his three friends interrupt his betting on the horses while he watches TV in his run-down council flat to give him a party and a present in the form of a stripper called Trixie. Mark doesn't say much, wrapped in his dressing gown seemingly glued to his armchair sucking in air and letting it out again. His long-time friend, the curiously named Rodney Pump, with the volubility of a barnstorming character out of Dickens, restlessly paces the room, his florid words flowing alliteratively, but barbed and stealthily seeking a victim. Annie, one of the few women that either Mark or Rodney can sustain any sort of relationship with - they describe her as a top tart or a splendid strumpet - is being pursued by Rodney and another, younger, manic depressive, Malcolm, at whom Rodney directs his bile and the occasional totally ineffective blow. Trixie is a good sort, a pro who has to put up with a lot. Everyone has to put up with Mark's dead budgie. Rodney, played with dark brilliance by Brian Sergent, is always on the edge of an alcohol-fuelled crisis and he cannot prevent himself from tossing verbal hand grenades into the celebration, partly for sheer devilry, partly to liven things up, and partly to display his intellectual superiority over the others. I'm almost exhilarated by how depressed I've become, he announces, but we know it's only a matter of time before the depression overtakes the exhilaration, and it does so in a gut-wrenching scene that cuts through the comedy leaving Rodney. vulnerable, pathetic and human. Despite looking a mite young for the part of Rodney, Sergent is superb in this dominating role of a man who uses words to shield him from life. However, Ken Blackburn is equally superb in the less showy role of Mark, the quiet, retired low-ranking public servant, who has retreated from life into his flat with his racing and drink. His withdrawn air and his quiet surprise at everything, particularly when Trixie gets to work on him, is beautifully drawn and his timing is, as usual, spot on. Both are given first-rate support from Anne Budd as the journalist, Annie, and Paul McLaughlin as the volatile Malcolm and Narelle Ahrens as Trixie. …The Love of Human Kind for all its manic humour and darkness, is a comedy with heart."

The Love Of Humankind Reviewer Mary Anne Bourke, Sunday Star Times Sunday 1st Feb 04:"

• "BRIAN SERGENT has long been dubbed a genius for his performances as a snarling, glittery-eyed character who, somehow, never seemed too far removed from himself. The only question was how we would ever get enough of this creature. Sergent's answer is to create Rodney Pump. Based on Sergent's friend, Wellington personality Brian Bell, who died in 2000 aged 71, Pump is a vicious, smelly drunk with the gift of the gab whose life's work is to inflict an endless stream of invective on his drinking mates. These thirsty degenerates gather to celebrate the 70th birthday of decrepit pensioner Mark Smith (based on a real, also deceased, Mark Smith and played with amusing torpor by Ken Blackburn) in his scungy flat, which is recreated in all its grimy, cluttered glory by set designer Ross Joblin. The excuse to hit the grog brings Anne Budd, playing a literary 1ush with a loser streak, and Paul McLaughlin as a happy-go-lucky mental health consumer, to endure abuse from Pump. Only this time a startling appearance by Narelle Ahrens as a community health nurse in a tiny white vinyl uniform incites a paroxysm of jealousy from Pump. This is a tour de force from Sergent. As a writer on the stage, he is able to realise his comedy exactly as he wants and director Mulheron concurs in honing these comic veterans to an understated perfection. We are treated to an hilarious classic comedy, that craftily delivers far more depth than it pretends to. A special pleasure is the curdling of the comedy from the offensive-as-possible gags of the first half into the risible, vodka-fuelled tragedy of the second. It's a disastrous journey that follows the low high-low bell-curve of alcoholic inspiration. Of all Sergent's delicious malignant humour, verbal & physical, a stand-out would have to be Pump's gratuitous translations of his friends' simple statements into convolutions of "dextrous loquacity", delivered in the incisively British accent of his idea of a barrister's eloquence. At times Sergent allows the vessel to drift momentarily into the doldrums of Pump's self pity, only to grab hold and, through sheer verve, take it to ever higher levels of hilarity. Though the quality of the writing means this farce should go on beyond even the life of Brian, you'd be mad to miss original version of a masterpiece."

The Evening Post Reviewed by Laurie Atkinson: (The Homecoming)

• "It was a stroke of genius to cast Brian Sergent as Lenny.  His comic timing and ability to suggest that beneath Lenny's thin lipped smile and snake like leer there beats the cold heart of a close relative of the Kray brothers, creates all the tension and laughter we have come to expect in the earlier plays of Pinter."

The Evening Post reviewed Laurie Atkinson: (Time of My Life)

• "...adding a comic zing to every scene in which he appears. Brian Sergent plays five outrageous waiters.  He has a whale of a time creating five different Europeans.....all five are deliciously funny cameos."