Who Laughs Last?

This Artsville documentary profiles Roger Hall, New Zealand’s most successful playwright. Three decades after Hall's early play Middle Age Spread became a hit, the original cast return for 2006 follow-up Spreading Out. Director Shirley Horrocks explores the secrets behind Hall’s successful brand of comedy (which includes dozens of stage plays, and TV hit Gliding On), while closely exploring Middle Age Spread and Spreading Out. Alongside excerpts from both, there are interviews with John Clarke, Grant Tilly, Ginette McDonald on Hall's role in the birth of her character Lynn of Tawa, and Hall himself.

To have the original cast, I think that's sort of a Guinness Book of Records thing. I don't know that anyone has ever done a sequel to a play 27 years later with four of the major original cast members.

– Spreading Out director Ross Jolly on directing the sequel to Middle Age Spread

Key Cast & Crew

Roger Hall

Subject

John Clarke

Subject

Peter Elliott

Actor in play Conjugal Rites, Narrator

Grant Tilly

Subject

Ray Henwood

Subject

Shirley Horrocks

Director, Writer, Research, Producer