Learning to swear correctly

Lisa Harrow, Robbie Magasiva (right) and Taofia Pelesasa star in Victor Rodger's At the Wake.

Theatre often gives actors an education in subjects they knew little about before accepting a role; just ask Lisa Harrow, who is starring in Victor Rodger's play At The Wake.

Harrow has learned to swear in Samoan, thanks to Rodger. He thought it would be amusing to see how Harrow's cast mate and his good friend, Robbie Magasiva, would react to being sworn at in his native language (for being late for rehearsals) by one of the country's most celebrated actors.

Rodger says it was a glorious moment because he has been enamoured with Harrow since childhood when he would watch her in television shows like Nancy Astor and Kavanagh QC. But Magasiva had the last laugh when he calmly corrected Harrow's pronunciation.

Joking aside, At The Wake has reinforced for Harrow how much New Zealand's theatre scene has matured. She left the country in the 1960s to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London and later joined the Royal Shakespeare Company to appear, in her first role, opposite Judi Dench in Twelfth Night.

"I think the way things have changed is fantastic. I look around at the ways in which actors now make their own opportunities and I keep thinking, 'I just wouldn't have known how to do that'."

For the past couple of years, she has spent half her time here and the other half in the United States where she lives with husband Roger Payne, a renowned whale biologist. Recently on the TV2 comedy Step Dave, she accepted the role in At The Wake of Joan after director Roy Ward sent her a script.

"Joan is a delicious role because she is a woman who speaks her mind, she's feisty and no holds barred and usually it's only men who get to play those kinds of roles. I also like getting the last word and I do in this. It's a very brave examination of the human condition."

Performed in Palmerston North in 2012, it's the Auckland premiere of the comedy with the new cast of Harrow, Magasiva and Taofia Pelesasa. It's Ward's third collaboration with Rodger, having directed My Name is Gary Cooper and Black Faggot.

"Like all of Victor's plays, it walks a knife-edge between comedy and bleak despair. It's about what happens when the smoke screen comes down and people start revealing what they really think - it's the old 'secrets and lies' revealed - and there's a catharsis between the past and present."

Like previous plays Sons and Black Faggot, At The Wake was inspired by Rodger's background. He started from the premise of what might happen if his estranged Samoan father, his Scottish grandmother and he were in the same room at the same time.

Although his own mother is very much alive, Rodger decided the only time the trio would likely meet would be at her funeral. He then wrote the grandmother, Joan, as an ageing former actress who gets through the wake by chain-smoking, swilling a $300 bottle of whisky and telling all those around her exactly what she thinks.

He's quick to say his own grandmother was nothing like Joan, who is delighted to see her gay grandson, Robert (Pelesasa), but far less pleased that his estranged father (Magasiva) has arrived to pay his respects and finally meet his son.

Pelesasa, 27, joins the cast after touring to Australia and Edinburgh in Pacific musical The Factory and starring in Rodger's Black Faggot here and in Australia.

"I like that Victor writes a lot of stuff which is not about being a Pacific Islander because I think there's a danger that Pacific theatre can get stuck in a 'woe is me - where do I want to belong?' tract. Instead, it is about real things that not many people in the Pacific community wants to deal with. When you're a Pacific Islander in New Zealand, you're already on the fringe but his characters are on the fringe of the fringe, which appeals to me because I'm on that 'fringe of the fringe' as well."

Magasiva describes Rodger as a fearless writer who's not afraid to confront difficult situations. The role of Robert's father was written with Magasiva in mind, but he was unable to play it in the debut production. He welcomes an older and more complicated character than those he has played in the past.

The muse for a number of Rodger's characters, he likes the challenge of complex and fearlessly written roles and, if he has to take his shirt off, it's to make a definite point rather than show off his famous physique.

"I have been pigeon-holed a bit as a 'beef cake' and I don't like it, so to play a 50-year-old [he's 42] is great. I've said it before, but Victor writes the songs I like to sing."