Pacific Underground has been in Christchurch for 16 years, telling stories of Pasifika in a city not known for having a lot of brown faces. Angels continues that tradition, with a story firmly based in the heavy hand religion has on Samoan women, combined with soul and gospel music. It is great to see them working in partnership with Operate Trust and the Court Theatre to bring this production to life.

Sing (Bronwyn Turei), Stevie (Sela Leavasa), Eleni (Joy Vaele) & Rosie (Cassie Baker) have been friends from their first White Sunday, along with Sale (Ave Sua).  They all have dreams of making it big in the music world, forming The Angels, an all girl band who play in the church, and (secretly) in nightclubs. The two hour play is framed around preparations for Stevie’s 30th Birthday, one of the many examples we see of the steadfast commitment this group of women have for each other.

The Samoan flavour of Angels is strong, starting from the aqua blue set, cleverly designed by Julian Southgate, and continuing on with the religion that both supports and undermines the women throughout the 17 year span of the play.

At first a retelling of the Parable of Ruth, the group’s White Sunday performance, Angels ends up reaching much further, delving in to Samoan girl power, the power of women and the obstacles we can overcome with the right attitude, a bit of sass and a good dose of humour.

All on stage are consummate musicians, the tunes (by Pos Mavaega & Tanya Muagututi’a) so catchy I could sing them to you now. The cast started tentatively but by the second half had hit their straps.

It is such an ensemble piece for the four women it is hard to single out any one great performance, but Bronwyn Turei, as Sing, gives a sensitive performance: spanning about twenty years in one show is no mean feat! Ave Sua, as the token male actor, does an awesome job of playing the token male of the group of friends, Sale, as well as the archetypal Samoan pastor. One of his best touches is the young Sale, in 1984, resplendent in one white glove and aviators paying homage to Michael Jackson. Shamon to that.  

At the heart of this play is a great Pasifika ‘chick-flick’ style work. But we have to get through a lot to get to this, including a lot of flashbacks and flash-forwards that get more and more confusing as we go on. There is a subplot where Sing’s daughter Maia (played with verve by Monique Togiaso) has leukaemia, which, while bringing the women together even more, could really be taken out in the interests of the work being a more manageable length.

I’m glad I do stay with the play though: the twist is better than any I’ve seen in recent works. This is a play rich in Pasifika flavour and deep in the Samoan culture. It deserves more development time to make it shine even more.
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This premiere production of the Samoan comedy Angels is the lively outcome of collaboration between The Operate Trust’s commitment to new writing, The Court Theatre’s commitment to fresh theatre experience and above all, it draws on talent and real-life inspiration that has fuelled the ground breaking Pacific Underground company for almost two decades.

With such a background, it was to be expected that the production would be an interesting one. In the event, Robert Gilbert’s resourceful production goes further. It finds a voice of its own for Pasifika women and leaves us with food for thought as well as remembered laughter.

The story is set as preparations for a 30th birthday party are gathering momentum in a mum’s bright living room, whose décor speaks of faith and family. Set into the walls are cupboards of various shapes and sizes, which as they are opened, trigger memory sequences to establish a wider world where family, friends, the Church and music are woven together , sometimes frayed but ultimately rock solid.

The structure of the play raises the problem of frequent transitions as the action passes from present to past, so that two story strands can proceed. The cupboard solution works well to introduce the shifts, but is initially a little puzzling as the characters themselves change so little. Not until the highly entertaining rendering of a remembered White Sunday do things really fall into place for me, but as the season progresses in the compact venue of The Forge (I saw the preview season at Aranui) the arrangement may become clearer.

As always, it is the characters themselves who engage our fullest attention and there is no shortage of vigorous talent in this production. A pair of cousins lies at the centre of events: showbiz singer Stevie, and Sing, who is raising a daughter, Maia. It is conveyed in all its turbulence by ebullient Sela Leavasa (Stevie) and the versatile Bronwyn Turei (Sing), who has the widest emotional distance of all to cover.

They are supported strongly by Joy Vaele and Cassie Baker as friends forever, Ave Sua playing all the male roles and Monique Togiaso as Maia (this role will also be played by Josephine Mavaega).

Their collective work is full of colour and musicality, for the girls form a band as an escape from the strict regime of Church and patriarchy. There is room for light and shade in the performances at this stage, with the full-on impact of highly charged playing not quite aligned to the shifts of time and fortune we are asked to embrace.

That being said, the work has appealing warmth and the overriding theme of loyalty and love is transparently played.

Perhaps the most important feature of the play is the voice it brings to our stage, setting out a world in terms we can see and feel. In these terms certainly, the production will be seen as a significant event. 
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