Reviewed by Malcolm Calder
Paradise Rumour
A Black Grace Production
Director and Choreograher – Neil Ieremia, ONZM
Composer – Faiumu Matthew Salapu aka Anonymouz
Lighting Designer – JAX Messenger
Costume Design – Tina Thomas
Makeup Design – Kiekie Stanners
Performers – Demi-Jo Manalo, Rodney Tyrell, Fuaao Tutulu Faith Schuster, Vincent Farane, Sione Fataua, Leki Jackson-Bourke
Sky City Theatre, Auckland
June 7
Reviewed by Malcolm Calder
Every so often I feel extraordinarily privileged to see something that stuns me to silence and ultimately exhaustion. That’s what happened when I saw Neil Ieremia’s latest work Paradise Rumour tonight.
Here is an international voice creating something truly international.
Commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation and premiered at its recent 15th Biennial, Paradise Rumour was conceived to meet the Foundation’s 2023 theme “Thinking Historically in the Present”. And that is precisely what Neil Ieremia has produced.
Using threads from his earlier Gathering Clouds (2009), Ieremia has addressed the plight of early Pacific migrants to Aotearoa. He considers and references the past (traditions, dreams and aspirations) and contrasts them with the present (unattainable shiny things) and revealed where they have got to. Which is everywhere and nowhere.
But, while starting out before even the arrival of missionaries and the impact of faith on traditional Samoan culture and values, the allusions of Paradise Rumour turn simple story-telling on its head, looking both backward and forward simultaneously, blurring individual and collective memory, and ensuring internal and external hopes merge with triumphs, prejudices, joy and values that don’t gel at all. That terrifying knock on the door at 5am was real for many and contrasts with the glittery things coveted by many that were not.
But it is a multi-layered world we live in today and while Paradise Rumour is firmly rooted in its Samoan origins, it is delivered using a language that is multi-layered for world consumption. Not only does it have an international breadth, it represents a mature and sophisticated Pacific voice that has the capability to looking outward and inward simultaneously. At an even more subtle level that voice is quite confident of occasionally merging tradition with modernity, complexity with simplicity, enlightenment with disappointment and humour with sadness.
Faiumu Matthew Salapu’s soundscape is both intimate at times and sweeping at others, engaging audiences with a broad range of musical genres, from Bach and Vivaldi to Samoan hip hop to the more electropop stylings of Lorde. It completes the marriage with other design elements.
This a stunning production.
New Zealand Arts Review 