Andrew Grainger delivers laughs about Auckland and ageing in End of Summer Time

Most of us have a man in our lives who has not quite moved with the times or is grumpy about the modern world – or we are one of these men ourselves. If we’re lucky, we know several of these old-timers: partners, husbands, bosses and dads.

Men of a certain age can find change challenging, struggle with what seem like obvious ideas or tasks... and refuse to swim with the tide of progress. Fortunately, they often also have redeeming features, such as being very funny.

Into this category, and many others, falls Dickie Hart – the narrator of Sir Roger Hall's playEnd of Summer Time. After two sold-out seasons in Wellington, you can catch it at Auckland's ASB Waterfront Theatre until 5 July.

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Dickie Hart is not a cantankerous old man – he has both rough edges and charm.

He tells his story from the living room of the Takapuna apartment he moved to in Auckland’s North Shore with his wife Glenda, who wanted to live near the grandkids (though we see little of their family).

We’re quickly thrown into the life of a newly arrived retiree in his 70s, getting used to the big city and coming to terms with Aucklanders.

Dickie, played by Andrew Grainger, is the only person onstage in Roger Hall’s End of Summer Time but through him – and some mimicry and masterful accents – we meet the many people Dickie knows. 

Hall’s great script includes some laugh-out-loud observations about a) Auckland and b) getting old, that will resonate strongly with those living in proximity to either.

It’s also dipped in pathos for those facing those tougher questions of middle to late life – Can we change? Can we still make new friends, navigate new roads (sometimes literally)? Can we reinvent ourselves after our children have their own lives?

For those not yet in that age demographic, there’s all the fun of laughing at Aucklanders, including the generation gap, the traffic and lots more besides.

Plus, there’s the window it offers into our later lives. Where would we want to live? And do? What if our family is far away? Can we imagine being older and still having adventures? 

Woven all the way through End of Summer Time is a gentle mocking of the urbane, the pompous, and the foibles of the wealthy.

Nicely, Dickie doesn’t spare himself from the same treatment, letting us see that he – and other people – can be garrulous, stuck-in-their-ways, even objectionable; but also down-to-earth, fun and thoughtful. 

If that sounds like a lot to cover, in End of Summer Time, it’s done at a measured tempo across two hours.

That Grainger holds the stage so well for such a long time in a monologue is also testament to his character’s relaxed style and laconic humour, kept fresh by the unseen characters he talks about.

The apartment set and props help keep the jokes coming, including a brief drag night.

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Through Dickie, we meet two of his neighbours, some members of his wife’s book club, a smattering of strangers, his wife (quite a lot) and son and daughter-in-law (not so much).

We go through rugby meltdowns and Covid lockdowns, floods and a cyclone, and get a glimpse into what emotions we’ll go through as we or our parents get lonely or poorly.

If that sounds a bit too sad, the script won’t let you linger too long – lightly noting, for instance, that Dickie is destined for a rest home... until the kids clock the costs, calculate the inheritance, and quickly see how vital independent living is.

As Dickie Hart, Grainger encourages us to laugh at the rich, the ordinary and the everyman and finds gentle ways of poking fun at their quirks while also keeping it real enough to do gags on traffic and housekeeping.

Hall first created Dickie as a rugby-mad fan during the losing World Cup of 1995 in South Africa.

If you listen to only one old man talking for two hours straight this year, it should be this one.

Auckland Theatre Company’s production of End Of Summer Time is at the ASB Waterfront Theatre in Auckland until 5 July.