The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 18
Kevin first came to Auckland about 1985 and that was when I noticed him. We got to know each other through working together at places like the Watershed Theatre. We became close when I cast him as Othello. We did an awful lot of work together because he was really wanting to be taken seriously. It was a big challenge for him to play that role on stage. From that moment we were fast friends.
He was quite the sports fanatic. We used to go and see the rugby games together. We'd also go to pubs with big screens and watch them on TV and jump around and scream a lot. One night, Anson Williams was in town directing me in a Hercules episode called “King For A Day.” Kevin and I took him to a sports bar. It was two-thirty in the morning when the All Blacks rugby team won the game and Kevin took off into the street, in the rain, and started doing the Haka. Anson was next to me just astounded at this sight.
Kevin and I and a couple of Hercules crew people used to meet regularly every couple months to let off some steam. It was great fun. Kevin would say, “I'm feeling a little saucy today.” That meant we're in for the duration. It's going to be a long night.
I also directed him in Love Mussel, which was a one-hour comedy about a shellfish. Which was a clever pun especially since Kevin was doing it. It was a pseudo-documentary about a little town that had discovered a kind of mussel called a Gooey Duck - which is a real shellfish. It turned out to have the properties of Viagra and was suddenly worth a lot of money. Kevin was playing himself going into this town and seeing how it was being affected by this new lucrative commodity. We made it in the beginning of 2001. It was very funny and a great piece of work. If you ever get hold of it, I think people would love seeing it.
Because it's a very small environment, if you're trying to make a living in the acting community of New Zealand, you can't become too specialized or you're not going to be working all year round. A lot of people are versatile in many areas, but Kevin was great at everything! It was something all of us were amazed at.
I directed him in a production of Cabaret and he played Cliff. It was then I discovered what an absolutely beautiful voice Kevin had. He was able to do tenor roles with really high singing and gorgeous notes. That was a stunning show.
During the memorial service I found out he could ride horses. He was in an Australian show called McLeod's Daughters that called for a lot of riding. The horse wranglers told the producers Kevin was so good, he would only need a couple weeks and he could ride in rodeos.
The only thing he couldn't do was golf. He was hopeless at that. He loved doing it, he just wasn't any good.
And as a standup comedian, he was so funny!
He had this reputation for being a big, muscley guy, but he was so bright and witty, it left us all gasping. If you put him in a debate situation, he’d write three sentences on a coaster a couple hours before the show and turn that into the funniest, most erudite, wittiest speech you could ever imagine. He had a real knack for being able to write and formulate ideas. And he was so clever! At University, he did philosophy and religious studies.
He was in a rock band and learned to play the guitar by copying other people. Then he outclassed all his band members. When he put his mind to something, he could do anything. He was very determined.
For example, look at his body. He was, in fact, an overweight child. He decided to change himself. He really worked at that. He would train at five in the morning. No matter what happened the night before, he was there working out at five.
He also did Theatre Sports, which is like Who's Line Is It Anyway? Someone said, if you were onstage with Kevin, you would feel safe. He had the uncanny ability to wrap it up. Give the piece a satisfying conclusion that worked. So people were never worried when they were with him during that.
He was not afraid to make himself look foolish. You know that from the conventions - dressing up in Hudson’s gown. He didn't mind. He had a great humility about him which is what made him so loved. I wrote an obituary for him in a trade magazine here called On Film. The issue included letters from people in the crew expressing how sorry they were that he'd gone. They all said the same thing - this man was one of us. Never any fuss. Known as “our Kev.”
I remember at the memorial we had something Kevin said to a friend in an email. It was the last message she received from him. He was trying to arrange to be at the Christmas In The Park benefit concert here in Auckland. He said, “I can get back in time and I know what the songs are.” And the last line read, “Set the controls for the heart of the sun.”
It sums him up. That’s what he used to do all the time. I think we all feel we want to live by that because of Kevin. The loss is so profound, we want to keep him alive by doing things in that way in his memory. No one can ever be him, but we can remember he never deviated. He always went for it. “Set the controls for the heart of the sun.”