By Richard Mays
Manawatu Evening Standard
July 15 2006 

Slices of banana are akin to slices of life.

Now this may not be a thought that occurs to everybody, but after taking in HelenBrown’s solo presentation of A Slice of Banana Cake all sorts of other comparisons may come to mind.

Award winning and popular columnist of the Manawatu Standard’s Saturday Magazine Life and Times, Brown has made a career out of home sliced homily.

She finds much of her inspiration for her writing syndicated to six New Zealand newspapers from ordinary and often domestic incidents.

She is as approachable on the phone from Melbourne where she has lived and worked for the past nine years, as she is on the page, quick at establishing empathy and common ground.

“I base my column on the ordinary things I do in a day, and every so often, baking banana cake is one of them. One day I realized that I wasn’t even measure out the ingredients. I was just doing it by instinct, and it occurred to me that life was like that.”

It’s that simple and that complex all at the same time.

The show, on the road to raise funds for hospices around the country, started life as a stage collaboration with jazz singer Malcolm McNeill in 2002. As well as being a journalist, Brown is author of nine books, a number of short stories, finds herself included in the book of Quotable New Zealand Women, and has worked as a TV scriptwriter.

The combination of all her skills and media experience equipped her for taking on the role of stage entertainer. The first version of the show with McNeill was called Words and Music and sold out at Court Theatre in Christchurch. On this tour Brown is accompanied by well known jazz musician Terry Crayford.

While Slice is a stage-based performance, Brown is quick to deny any pretensions to being an actress.

“At my age, getting up on stage in front of 400 or so people is not something I particularly want to do. I can’t act, so when I’m on stage I have to be myself, and that can be quite exposing.”

What the writer is exposing is an account of who she is, based around the tragic death of her nine year-old son Sam, hit by a car while taking an injured bird to the vet.

“Back then there was nothing to help people like me deal with this grief. We’re a lot more civilised about death and dying these days. People are much better at talking about their grief, and seeing help to cope with it.”

The New Plymouth born and raised writer embellishes this story of love and loss with others – less traumatic- about her upbringing in a provincial town, her coming of age and other insights into human behaviour.

She still hasn’t worked out why it works, but wherever Brown has performed her story has resonated.

It’s a bit akin to baking the recipe-free banana cake –all the ingredients are there and the mix of lightness, humour and sadness is spot on.

“At every performance there’s someone who has been through or is going through a similar experience of loss. Audiences give back so much and I think it might have something to do with the revival of storytelling; of people sharing artfully presented but authentic stories that relay real experiences.”

A champion of New Zealand provincial centres, Brown sees big advantages in her own Taranaki upbringing. Smaller towns she say expose people to wider experiences and encounters across a broad spectrum of society less restricted by whether they live in a poor or affluent neighbourhood.

“Just about anybody who has made it big, from Shakespeare to Abraham Lincoln, comes from the provinces.”