Arise, Sir Michael. The sooner that legendary actor Michael Hurst is knighted, the better for the culture we live in that genius such as his is recognised. He may well be the finest Shakespearean in New Zealand and certainly no one ever played a better Theban divine hero than Hurst did as Iolaus in Hercules. His services to theatre, film and TV are known to all. But last week he provided a fabulous service to New Zealand literature with an outstanding performance, one night only, of one of the greatest works of fiction ever produced in these islands.
It was at an event in downtown Auckland on Tuesday night when the celebrated Writers Write: Actors Read series of live performances began its 2026 season. Hurst was the headline act. A few years ago he was made an Officer of the Order of New Zealand Merit but only a knighthood will suffice. He blew everyone away at the Auckland event.
The live series was created last year, when Bridget van der Zijpp came up with the notion of inviting well-known actors to read out loud short stories by NZ writers at an onstage event held on the first Tuesday of each month. It’s a simple, brilliant initiative, and very successful; every event I attended last year was packed, even though the venue was a rather soulless basement (brightly lit, nothing to look at) in an Ockham apartment behind Great North Rd. I gather it’s no longer available. Hooray! The 2026 season of Writers Write: Actors Read has shifted to the rather amazing Button Factory behind K Road but so close to K Road that a rent boy was trading just around the corner. It was a terribly cold night. He was wearing shorts.
The room upstairs at the Button Factory was dark. There were maybe about 100 people. Karyn Hay was there. Megan Nicol Reed was there. Elisabeth Easther was there. There were men, too, and racially the gathering resembled the Herne Bay Residents Association. There was a disco ball on the ceiling, and low lighting. There were drinks and crisps—you’d think someone would whip up a few muffins or hot chips, but hospitality isn’t what it used to be. The place was packed. The atmosphere was groovy and even kind of sexy. The Button Factory hosts all sorts of events including a dating night called Silent Connections: “No small talk, no swiping, just presence.” Sounds like an orgy. Do they do muffins?
Each night at Writers Write: Actors Read consists of two short stories read by two actors. On Tuesday night, the programme was Hurst reading ‘An Affair of the Heart’, Frank Sargeson’s 1936 classic, and Michelle Langstone reading ‘Concrete Box’ by Ingrid Horrocks, taken from the author’s short story collection, All Her Lives, winner of this year’s $65,000 fiction prize at the Ockham awards.
The two stories formed an ingenious diptych. Both were about women in difficult circumstances.
Sargeson’s story was narrated by Freddy Coleman, commenting on the pitiful condition of poor old Mrs Crawley; it was told at a kind of distance, with Coleman not really knowing the facts or realities of Mrs Crawley’s life. Horrocks’s story went right inside the heart of the matter. Her story was told by Rosa, a solo mum struggling to cope with two kids and a hideous dog, cooped up in a block of flats (hence the concrete box of the title). Both stories were powerful and both were given strong performances.
As an actor, a performer of the written word, Hurst is one of our great storytellers. He inhabited the role of Freddy Coleman in Sargeson’s story with sensitivity and grace. Coleman is a strange rooster. He describes himself as a happy vagabond but there’s something missing in him, some unspoken poignancy, and Hurst brought a sense of humility, decency and evasiveness to the role. He took his audience to the setting at Takapuna Beach—not named, but suggested. All of the story was about suggestion. Sargeson wrote about his chosen style in a column in the Auckland Star, in 1937, “Very often the simplest words will do. The method is largely one of suggestion and implication.” And so ‘An Affair of the Heart’ was one monosyllable after another and inbetween the spaces it was possible to wonder about Freddy Coleman, and why he was an outsider—maybe, like Sargeson, he was gay, an outlaw. And what of Mrs Crawley, with her kids underfoot, and digging for pipis (possibly at Thorne Beach)—was she Māori, maybe Dalmatian?
Whoever anyone was and whatever was going on beneath the surface it was a desperately sad story. “I thought of her all those years digging in the garden, digging for pipis, pulling up mussels and picking up pinecones, bending her body until it couldn’t be straightened out again, until she looked like a new sort of human being.” As the dark ending drew near I leaned forward on to the edge of my seat, drawn towards Hurst as he stood onstage and summoned the ghost of Sargeson back to life with his reading that reminded you why ‘An Affair of the Heart’ is a stone-cold classic of New Zealand literature.
Hurst had to run after his reading. That was a shame. I wanted to shake the hand of this great artist at the intermission. I settled for chips and Coke. Next up was Langstone, an actor and author of considerable intelligence, someone who occupies quiet spaces in her work. You can watch her right now on Three, in Head Girl, a Gen Z drama series by Wellington poet Freya Sadgrove.
Her role in Horrocks’s story ‘Concrete Box’ called for her to play solo mum Rosa with care. It was hard to know how close to the edge Rosa was but maybe pretty close. Certainly she had her bad days. Note the beautiful little moment in this passage when she shows not tells that Rosa is separated: “Pouring water and baking soda on the dark patch of pee while Bear continued to bark furiously right in my face, scraping the shit from the carpet, leaving Mia with my mother because she wasn’t sure I could cope, having to call her father and feel his irritation flooding down the phone…”
God I hated Bear! I mean I hate just about every dog in the world but Bear was the pits. It shat everywhere, it barked its head off, its fur stank. Rosa’s neighbours were not best pleased with Bear and I took their side, fully, even though I actually kind of hated the neighbours, too. Certainly I hated the block of flats. I guess ‘Concrete Box’ was set in the Hutt Valley: “The real estate agent had led us down the hallway and pointed out an old photo of the house from a century back, when the rest of our valley was a mess of cleared hills and grey dirt.” It summoned the bleak territories that Asher Emanuel wrote of in the year’s best book, his amazing work of immersive journalism, The Valley.
Langstone’s sensitive reading and Horrocks’s masterful character writing showed you Rosa as someone trying her best in a difficult situation, like poor old Mrs Crawley, sitting in the bus stop night after night, waiting for her son… ‘Concrete Box’ was claustrophobic, and psychologically intense; Langstone’s reading brought it out into the open, and she had the sell-out audience hooked.
Great event, great short stories, a great night at the Button Factory. The rent boy was nowhere to be seen afterwards on the mean and seedy streets behind K Road. Another outsider, another mysterious life being lived in a conformist colony at the end of the world.
