I left the performance with both exultation and relief. It seemed that in this country there could be work done that was serious, experimental and dangerous.... I was impressed by the vastness of the undertaking, the willingness to go to those limits where the new and the unexpected can be found.... I was left exhausted, physically jangled and in a state of nervous apprehension by this production. While Crusoe achieved the traditional demand of catharsis, the after-shocks of going through the experience and emerging reconnected with those around me was one of my most satisfying nights at the theatre
- Alan Brunton, Red Mole
1 performance in June 1998, The Music Centre Chapel, Christchurch
​30 Jun - 2 July 1998, The Meteor Theatre, Hamilton, Fuel Festival

Reviews and Responses

This is a stylised, measured and theatrically effective production.

Crusoe, presented by Free Theatre, Christchurch, directed by Peter Falkenberg
Hillary Falconer, Waikato Times, Wed July 1, 1998
...working in the territory of many of the world's current leading stage directors - a scenographic and ritualised theatre, centred on the body, on the materials within performance, and on notions of space, time, and dance. A performance drawn from an elegant understanding of the principle of the chorus, highly disciplined, and much more professional in its expressive rigour than much of what passes for 'professional' theatre in New Zealand

- John Downie
​*read full letter here

Publications

Lacking Drama, Making Theatre: Why Can't Robinson Crusoe Play?
Peter Falkenberg, 1998

​Lacking Desire/Making Drama: The Theatrical Meets the Prosaic in a Post-Puritanical World
Peter Falkenberg, Degrés Fall/Winter, 1999
See also the previous iteration of this project Robinson Crusoe (1996).