Review: The Pohutukawa at the Maidment Theatre

Rena Owen is ready for the challenge of playing matriarch Aroha Mataira, who cannot cope with change. Photo / Amelia Hamdscomb

A tale of two families - one Maori, the other Pakeha - involving land, religion, lust and injustice is a familiar trope these days (most recently seen in Te Karakia). However, when Bruce Mason (of The End of the Golden Weather fame) wrote The Pohutukawa Tree 50 years ago, it was a prototype of operatic New Zealand family drama.

The trials of the proud Aroha Mataira, as her children rebel against her strict rules and her absent iwi conspire to sell the land she lives on, don't speak directly to today's bicultural politics, but Mason's message is of historical interest.

The play's fears - that Maori are doomed either to life without grandeur or to dignity and death - shock with their restrictive hopelessness. People really thought this only half a century ago?

In this Auckland Theatre Company production directed by Colin McColl, Rena Owen has the face of "epic grief" and "wonderful warmth" Mason's stage directions call for, but her Aroha is primarily a hard, rigid woman.

At first, the character also seems slightly mad, like a Tennessee Williams heroine; in contrast, by the last scene, Owen is powerfully still, a patrician holding her head high.

She and the rest of the older cast are excellent, particularly Catherine Wilkin whose Mrs Atkinson is very sympathetic, while Stuart Devenie's knees revel in their very own cameo, thanks to Dr Lomas's kilt.

Of the younger cast, Fern Sutherland as the snippy Sylvia is the stand-out, while Tiare Tawera handles Johnny's emotional scenes with passion and grace. Unusually, Edwin Wright, as the reasonable parson, plays an authoritative, grown-up role and he rises to the occasion.

Set designer Tony Rabbit has blanketed the stage and back wall with busy horizontal planks; the Chekovian despair of The Pohutukawa Tree is underlined by this overwhelming mass of chopped wood, but the props and locations of actors' entrances don't quite take on the job of grounding the action in any particular setting.

Most post-war pieces Auckland has seen in recent years are American - interestingly, The Pohutukawa Tree shares the high-tension drama of Williams, Arthur Miller et al. It is as much a product of its international era as its country, challenging the myth of 1950s cultural isolation.