Ruth Agnew reviews An Hour of Smith and Allan at Little Andromeda, Friday 17 April 2026.
Daniel Allan and Trubie-Dylan Smith are well known names, names recognised across Ōtautahi and beyond. Trubie-Dylan Smith’s roles reflect his versatility, ranging from presenting What Now to the recent Every Brilliant Thing and Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen at the Court Theatre and Dungeons and Dragons: The Twenty Sided Tavern. Daniel Allan’s resume includes an epic performance in The Odyssey and a charming turn in the Court Theatre’s Murder on the Orient Express. In addition to plays where they have to learn lines, both have been at the forefront of improvised theatre for years, which brings us to tonight’s offering, an hour of improvised theatre, created off the cuff, on the spot, at Little Andromeda.
The title of the show, An Hour of Smith and Allan, immediately evokes for me memories of an English comedy TV show from last century, Griff Rhys-Jones and Mel Smith’s Alas Smith and Jones. The title is a pun on the American Western television series from the 1970s, Alias Smith and Jones. Most of the audience filling Little Andromeda to watch Smith and Allan make something up would be too young to make this connection though, so I googled to see what the younger set might think of when they hear “Smith and Allan”. Apparently Smith and Allan is a renowned brand of lubricant and oil. Seeing nothing potential humourous about that, let’s climb out of the Smith and Allan wormhole I have found myself in, and discuss dildos.
Anyone who has attended a secondary school theatresports match or late night Scared Scriptless (the Court Theatre and Australasia’s longest running comedy show) will be familiar with the improvisers asking the audience for an offer to start a scene. Whether the call is for a setting, an object, a name or emotion, inevitably an overtly sexual or scatalogical response will be shouted: “a toilet!”, “a sex worker!”, or, in the case of An Hour With Smith and Allan, “dildos!” The smooth and skillful way the duo handled this offer was testament to their years of experience having such things thrown at them. Smith acknowledged and discarded the dildos offer quicker than a National MP at Waitangi, although they did briefly resurface later in the evening, albeit never in an NSFW manner.
Dildos dispensed with, a crown was the one audience offer chosen as the starting stimulus for an hour of long form improvisation, each scene a new chapter in an increasingly convoluted story, Smith and Allan playing an array of surprisingly nuanced characters, and concluding neatly exactly an hour after they started.
There is a special sense of “you had to be there” that exists in the improv world. If you weren’t there, you will never truly understand the hilarity of the quick witted quips or the audience interactions as the story spilled off the stage. That’s the magic of improvisation, and if you don’t know what I mean by that, you need to get out into the world of structured make believe. An Hour of Smith and Allan did not have the perimeters usually set up around improvised theatre, a potentially dangerous situation for two actors with a full house to entertain, but both Smith and Allan are armed with sharp minds and imaginations, so the hour is a great success. An hour is exactly the right length for such a show, and Smith and Allan are the right improvisers, especially following the brilliantly funny all-female Skate or Die. I eagerly await Another Hour With Smith and Allan.
An Hour of Smith and Allan was performed on Friday 17 April 2026.
Flat City Field Notes 