The setting of Auckland writeractor-artist-director Carl Bland’s new play I Want To Be Happy is usually hidden from public view. A science lab that tests products on live animals, it’s a place Bland describes as “a prison for the innocent” in a show he says is “sometimes very funny and sometimes very sad”.
The “innocent” one is Binka, a guinea pig humanised by the venerable Jennifer Ludlam in her first thespian outing as a rodent – although, Bland hastens to add, “we are trying to avoid putting her in a big guinea pig costume”.
Guinea pigs are social animals usually kept in groups as
