AK03: Potiki's Memory of Stone at the Regent Theatre

By STUART YOUNG

A full house for the opening of Potiki's Memory of Stone testifies to the eager anticipation of the latest play by one of Aotearoa's leading dramatists, Briar Grace-Smith.

Like Greek tragedy, Potiki's Memory of Stone shows the fatal consequences of messing with the spirits/gods. While seeming to promise happiness, the forces of fate conspire to punish, and, as we've seen before, in Hone Kouka's Nga Tangata Toa, for example, Maori women both suffer and deliver retribution for the folly and weakness of men.

Strongly mystical, the Court Theatre production is set on the South Island's West Coast.

Potiki has fallen in love with Tui, who has come to a small town doing research on pounamu for her thesis. The memory which haunts the young man, and the play, concerns a traumatic incident involving his father's quest for a stone.

The connection between Tui and the guardian of that stone is underlined by having both roles played by Miriama McDowell, although sometimes this creates confusion.

Cathy Downes' production is almost operatic. The floor steams; voices occasionally reverberate through amplification; and Gillian Whitehead and Sheena Baines' grandiose soundscape, featuring an overbearing cello, accentuates solemn moments.

The result is an unfortunate straining for mythic, epic effect that recalls ATC's portentous tragification of Grace-Smith's Haruru Mai in 2001.

To some extent Downes' approach is invited by the text's pronounced poetic passages - the stone imagery and the evocation of place.

However, treating the play with a lighter touch, as a smaller piece, might achieve the desired grandeur.

Certainly, that strategy worked for Taki Rua's Awhi Tapu last week.

Like the production elements, the acting is at times forced. Comic scenes veer towards buffoonery and caricature.

Jennifer Ludlam's grotesque drinking-smoking-gambling "white trash from Ashburton" delivers too many lines to the audience in the manner of a bad Roger Hall production.

The play would benefit from greater narrative clarity and a stronger sense of Tui and Potiki's relationship.

There is also a crucial problem of credibility. It is difficult to believe that anybody engaged daily in working greenstone would not recognise the stone Tui wears - especially such a striking pendant.

The play has been denied the interval it had in Christchurch. Is this because the venue is so scungy?

Herald Feature: Auckland Festival AK03

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