REVIEW: The Maori J'accuse

Patua, written and produced by Renae Maihi, produced by Hiona Henare – Blanket & Musket Productions, at Tapac, Motions Rd, Western Springs, to May 26

What should have happened to the family of the Kahui twins: those miserable people who kept a conspiracy of silence over who hurt two babies?

This play, Patua, answers that in a way that surprises, inspires and satisfies.

It will become a New Zealand classic. It certainly should play in every secondary school in this country as a warning against violence, especially against children.

Audiences will cry through this production. It is a hard ride through family violence balanced only by its offering of compassion and humour of a family bearing up under its own burdens.

It traces two sides of a family, one where a little girl has been beaten to within an inch of her life and is taken alone by ambulance to hospital; the adults in her life stay at home refusing to answer the phone or talk about her to outsiders or even to go see her.

The other side of the family has had its share of tragedy. A father who died when his children are young, a grown son with a young mental age and behaviour issues, a daughter who can’t have children, a mother who has had to stop community nursing because she has become horrified by the way people treat children.

But on hearing their uncle, a hospital chaplain, discover “she is one of ours”, this side of the family steps in. The action they take is one anyone who read about the suffering of the Kahui twins would have wished for the Kahui family. (And no, it doesn’t involve violence.)

This is Renae Maihi’s second play – her first, Nga Manurere, was a slower, more complicated but witty look at the life of solo mothers. Patua, in comparison is sharp, accusatory and judgmental: the programme notes say the play constantly asks the questions “what happened to make them behave like that?”

They also say the play will provoke audiences to consider nature over nurture “and whether the wider historical and social issues facing Maori have played a role in creating the abusers”.

It's not okay

That’s not the message I got from this production, though. Rather it was: It’s not okay and we won’t let you do this any more, a message I left inspired by.

The play opened with a wero, a challenge that I came to see was intended for the audience: what are you/we going to do about family violence? It was a Maori J’accuse, if you like.

The production was well choreographed and used a minimalist set of beer crates moved around to become different bits of furniture. That approach works well for distressing moments.

When the baby’s aunt reveals who hurt the baby and how, it is distressing enough to have it described without having a baby or even a doll present.

Though even so, when the violent grandfather threw away a cloth that a mere minute before had been used to represent the child, the audience winced.

I have a faint memory that in Maihi’s first play chairs were used in the same way. As clever as such devices can be, in both plays pretending chairs or boxes are gravestones in a cemetery left me cold – it just didn’t work and diminished the acting.

Some of Maihi’s characters are better drawn than others; as in the woman who couldn’t have children and her pakeha husband. Their physical acting made up for the pious words they had to spout. Sometimes the do-gooder rhetoric needed a stronger dose of irony.

It was a good ensemble of experienced and young actors. The actors playing the characters in the violent side of the family might like to slow down their words and articulate more to make the meanings clearer but I am sure this will happen over the season. An outstanding actor as the disabled son was Mohi Critchley.

Two actors played mirror roles – perhaps the playwright’s way of showing what the other side of the family could be given the circumstances. It was very clever.

The actors were: William Davis, Stephen Butterworth, Aroha Hathaway, Cian Elyse White, Vinne Bennett, Maria Walker, Mohi Critchley, Ngaphuia Piripi, Kate Vox and Mia Curan.

This play runs only to May 26: see it soon.