Te Po is a truly New Zealand play

Te Po
Theatre Stampede & Nightsong Productions
Auckland Arts Festival
Q Theatre
Until March 14

Te Po could have been written by Tom Stoppard. Like the works of the great surrealist dramatist, Te Po consists of playful inventiveness with word-play, intellectual jokes, audacious paradoxes, and self-conscious theatricality, as it reworks pre-existing narratives.

There is also a Beckett-like feel to the play as the three characters wait for events to unfold in a reference to Waiting for Godot.

The play is also quite Shakespearean in its approach following the bard’s line about ‘All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.”

A policeman, a priest and a blind man meet in the study of playwright Bruce Mason who has disappeared. The policeman begins looking for clues as to the disappearance, suicide or murder of the writer. This is where the play seems very Tom Stoppardian with suggestions of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and The Real Inspector Hound.

The quest becomes mired in discussions on the nature of truth, life and death as the inspector attempts to build his case for the author’s disappearance brick by brick. Questions and discussions about illusion and reality, fact and fiction merge with postmodern theories.

The transformative moment comes (some will have worked it out really early on) when we and the on stage characters discover that they are actually characters from some of Bruce Mason's plays.

The play takes on a truly surreal quality, with the appearance of a Dali-like giraffe which confronts two of the characters. The point of the giraffe’s appearance is unclear but Dali thought of it as the masculine cosmic apocalyptic monster and believed it to be a premonition of death. Possibly the characters thought that as well.

Carl Bland as the Rev Athol Sedgwick and Andrew Grainger as Detective Inspector Brett both provide seriously flawed characters – Sedgewick in pursuit of spiritual goals and Brett in search of facts. Only the blind Maori, Werihe (George Henare) is able to provide any sense to the tale and their dilemmas.

Max Cumberpatch who has a brief appearance as the twelve-year-old Bruce Mason – the young boy from End of the Golden Weather, does a commendable job and looks like a small well-formed thespian rather than a child actor

The remarkably clever set designed by Andrew Foster featured a superb modernist 1960s interior with several mysteriously moving chairs and a foreboding albatross and giraffe.

The various parts of the play are introduced / ended with George Henare singing soulful Maori big band songs which offer a counterpoint to the cerebral action on stage.

Having constructed an elaborate beautifully formed interlinked story, the final coda to the play, delivered with fury and eloquence by Carl Bland, seems like a passionate rage against the chaos but unrelated to the work we have just seen.

Te Po will have a great future. It is a truly New Zealand play. Like End of the Golden Weather, it could be set nowhere else.The script by Carl Bland is inventive and intelligent with overlapping themes and narratives which make an incredibly satisfying experience.

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