Reviewed by Malcolm Calder
Auckland Arts Festival
O Le Pepelo la Gaoi, ma le Pala’ai
The Liar, the Thief and the Coward
By Ui Natano Keni and Sarita Keo Kossamak So
ASB Waterfront Theatre
Until 23 March
Reviewed by Malcolm Calder, 7 March 2024
A co-production by Auckland Theatre Company, I Ken So Productions and Auckland Festival
Director Ui Natano Keni
Producer Sarita Keo Kossamak So
Assistant Rehearsal Director Maiava Nathaniel Lees
Choreographer Tupua Tigafua
Composer Poulima Salima
Set & Properties Mark McEntyre & Tony De Goldi, GOM Arts Collective
Costume Design Cara Louise Waretini
Lighting Design Jennifer Lal
Sound Design Karnan Saba
Visual Design Delainy Kennedy, Artificial Imagination
I am a palangi and my knowledge and detailed understanding of fa’asāmoa is rudimentary at best. So it would be presumptuous to pretend that I do – and no doubt very few Samoans would speak to me again.
My own antecedents settled here from Scotland, harking back mainly to small village communities in the north. I have enjoyed visiting many times and am constantly learning things about their society from long ago. So it would be presumptuous to pretend that I do – and no doubt very few Samoans would speak to me again!
My own antecedents settled here from Scotland, harking back mainly to small village communities in the north where they worked as crofters. I have enjoyed visiting many times and am constantly learning things about their society and the customs young and productive people left behind in the fairly feudal society four or five generations ago when they sought betterment through emigration elsewhere.
However some customs and traditions travelled with them and scraps of those links remain today. The result remains as some kind of low key but deeply-rooted spiritual melange – sort of what was ‘then’ overlaid with what is ‘now’. Let’s face it, in my own case I have a spine that unfailingly frizzles each time I see and hear that lone piper playing Flower of Scotland high on the roof at Murrayfield before a rugby test.
All of which is a long way from Samoa. But the parallels are not dissimilar even though I approached O Le Pepelo with a certain sense of trepidation and even wondered if I had made a dreadful mistake during the first couple of context-setting scenes which are conducted almost entirely in Samoan. Good heavens, I thought – Samoan speakers in the audience seem to be getting all the jokes while I didn’t have a clue!
But that soon changed as Samoan merged with English, my trepidatious concerns evaporated and I became totally absorbed as an excellent piece of theatre revealed itself. You know … something about a simple story told well.
O Le Pepelo started out that way. The publicity machine had outlined the basic plot well – an ageing and ill village elder, concerned about who should inherit his position and status on his passing and the decisions this would require. But that is just a context and this is a play that is so much more. It is about a clash between the traditional value systems and customs confronting Pili and a more modern world where lifestyle becomes a determinant. They are in no way simple.
This leads quite easily to discussion and debate, to adaptation and expectation, and eventually to a form of resolution. Different characters flesh out these themes, and the more they do so, the more complexity and depth is revealed. In fact, this simple story told well quickly moves to a grander more universal scale without losing its more intimate familial setting.
The bones of O Le Pepola are fleshed out with sparkling characterisations, liberal sprinklings of comedy and a remarkably competent cast, while my more personal echoes of the Scottish diaspora points to its universality. Keni and So point to this using a fairly classic idiom that echoes the dilemma of a certain Shakespearean king.
In the village of Moa there are three key protagonists. The ill, aged and dying Pili Sā Tauilevā (Semu Filipo), a longstanding chief or Ali’i and his two children. His eldest son Matagi (Haanz Fa’avae-Jackson) is a traditionalist with high expectations, while his daughter Vailoloto (Ana Corbett) returns from New Zealand embracing the new and the future, appalled because she cannot get a strong wifi signal. Pili is strongly supported by his wife Fa’asoa (Aruna Po-Ching) . But it is Masina (Andy Tilo-Faiaoga) who quietly and assuredly reinforces the dignity, wisdom and humility that underpins the both th inherited position and the play itself and becomes a significant part in its resolution.
Billed as a darkly comic exploration of mores and debate, O Le Pepola expands on something we all know a little about, gives it a contemporary currency and its key characters will remain with me for a while yet.
Auckland Theatre Company and Auckland Festival are to be congratulated on bringing this work to life. It is on point.
Oh, and I loved the chickens.
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