It’s great that Mark Twain and Me in Maoriland has been re-worked and brought back in a revised and vibrant production that is much more cohesive and clearly presented than it was when it was first seen earlier this year at the International Arts Festival, where it played at the Soundings Theatre. The more intimate Downstage is also a plus.

Back in March it was a bit of a muddle. Mark Twain (Stephen Papps) seemed almost irrelevant and appeared to be on stage only because he was a world famous author who had visited this country on a lecture tour in 1895during which he made remarks about two war memorials in Whanganui that upset the local establishment.

One memorial was to the Pakeha who had died fighting “fanaticism ”, which Twain felt was a slur on the Pai Marire ; the other memorial in Whanganui’s Moutoa Gardens was to Maori who had died fighting there with the Pakeha against other Maori, which Twain thought “invites treachery, disloyalty, unpatriotism” and should be dynamited.

The central point of Geary’s play is the effects of colonialism on Maori.

On one side is Ra (beautifully portrayed by Maaka Pohatu) who fought with the Pakeha to protect his way of life because he is the only survivor of an attack by Pai Marire on his family and tribe. On the other is Piki (a powerhouse performance from Ngapaki Emery) who is determined to hold on to the traditional beliefs and way of life of Maori. She sees Ra as a quisling.

There is mention during the play of Maori being deliberately poisoned by some of the leaders of the Whanganui community. Twain once wrote that there are many humorous things in the world: among them the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

The bare bones production (the river is a vast white cloth the covers the stage and the back wall) has many moments of theatrical magic (water sloshing about in a plastic bottle for paddle noises), and moments of striking pathos (blankets littering the stage for the dead on a battlefield), as well as moments of outrageous comedy (a vaudeville show at the Oddfellows Hall) and well-aimed, hilarious satire at the Machiavellian schemes of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches (Aaron Cortesi and Allan Henry).

The play and the production are now working together in harmony. It is well worth revisiting or attending for the first time.
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I called it a confidence trick in my review of the world premiere (link below): “under the guise of telling the ‘Twain in Mâoriland’ story,” I wrote, “the play confronts us with aspects of our history that are rarely acknowledged let alone understood, and which remain unresolved today.”

It plays out with even greater confidence now, and with greater stylistic cohesion. From a highly entertaining concoction of popular /poor (as in penniless) /people’s theatre conventions, David Geary and company with director John Bolton distil the story of European colonisation to a piquant essence. And they conscript a subversive American wit, on a fund-raising tour to pay his debts, to do the trick.

The recurring image of Mark Twain (Stephen Papps) up the Whanganui without a paddle – it’s securely in the hands of an ageing Ra (Maaka Pohatu) – leads us into the investigation of how someone so famous and revered came to feel so alienated and endangered.

As I understand it, David Geary’s original script was a ‘who shot Mark Twain and why?’ story. It played with the ‘what if’ proposition that the crazy person who entered Twain’s hotel room in Whanganui succeeded in his assassination attempt. The motive was revenge for Twain’s journal entry (discovered by Ra) that the monument erected in Moutoa Gardens to honour the kupapa Mâori who fought with the colonial government forces, “cannot be rectified except with dynamite,” because the Hauhau rebels were “the true patriots”.

In the version subsequently devised with Bolton and the actors – Pohatu, Papps, Ngapaki Emery, Aaron Cortesi and Allan Henry – to premiere at the NZ International Arts Festival, Twain speaks his criticism openly, upsetting the locals greatly. And later the would-be assassin (Cortesi) flits through a very brief scene. Perhaps the witty comment Twain made about this incident has been cut because it doesn’t serve the greater dramatic purpose.

But the question Twain raises lies at the heart of the play. It is their fascination and delight at what ‘civilisation’ has brought them – exemplified in an umbrella and a musket – that precipitates the core debate between the two Mâori factions.

Ra explains that he fought for the Pakeha government so they – the kupapa – could look after their land and families; because the Pai Marire (named Hauhau by the British) destroyed the family of which he is the sole survivor; because it earns him money to buy clothes, feed his family, buy guns … Piki (Emery) argues that they must hold on to their beliefs or they are lost.

Meanwhile the nature of the settler society is characterised by a trombone-playing, asphalt-loving Mayor (Cortesi) who leads a vaudeville troupe – Emery, Henry and Pohatu – at the Oddfellows Hall. They trade lame quips, sing, dance and introduce their superlative guest speaker, Twain. The influence of the Catholic and Anglican churches is also wickedly satirised (Henry and Cortesi).

Papps makes it clear there is more to the ageing and ailing Twain than a celebrity deliverer of epigrams, and his role as writer/creator – observing, noting, enquiring, questing; attempting to understand, interpret and reconcile the society he finds himself within – is now clearer and a more consistent. He remains the conduit for the substantive story, however, which is as it should be.

Dare I say, it is through his eyes that we see how colonisation rent Mâoridom in twain? Except it is not as if there was pan-Mâori unification before the settlers came. And the great strength of the play is that it does not over simplify or take sides; the essence it extracts is complex and unresolved. Even so, his attempts to bring them together – to have the twain meet (“He goes to her,” he keeps on urging, yet Ra cannot) – represents humanity’s timeless quest for peace and reconciliation.

The well-placed anachronisms and topical resonances serve to prove Twain’s observation that (as Geary reminds us in his programme note) history may not repeat itself but it sure does rhyme a lot.

In this season the odd bits of non-dramatised narration (Henry) are better integrated but still seem like a notes in the margin for the dramatist to come back to. And some elements – like what it signifies for Twain’s white wig to be absent at the start, then worn for most of the play, then shot off towards the end – elude me.

Nevertheless the alchemy remains that makes me feel I’m absorbing this play through my pores (pore theatre?) as much as through my other senses. John Gibson’s sound design and haunting compositions have a lot to do with that, along with the lighting (Glenn Ashworth adapting Martyn Robert’s design for the Downstage space) on Kasia Pol’s flow of whiteness set (writing paper? a blank canvas? the river?).

I am not the only person afterwards to feel I have been in the presence of something very special. It’s been more of a subconscious travelling experience than a theatrical one, although the conscious theatricality is in itself a delight.

Mark Twain & Me in Mâoriland has not only matured as a play and production; it heralds a new maturity in homegrown theatre on many levels and deserves big audiences in New Zealand and further afield.
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The other world premiere in the International Festival is David Geary’s play Mark Twain and Me in Maoriland.

One of the starting points for this story was the fact that Huckleberry Finn’s creator came to New Zealand as part of a money making lecture tour. Ultimately though, it is really very little about Mark Twain and very much about Maori, Maori land and Maori-Pakeha history.

It is more of a lament for the loss of land, of lives and of faith. While it’s set in Whanganui and talks of a massacre there, this story represents the destruction that happened throughout New Zealand in the name of colonisation.

There is laughter amidst the grief, notably the missionary duet played with irreverent grotesqueness. The play is a bit elusive at times as you try to follow the story, piece together the vignettes, fill in the gaps between and work out Twain’s place in the story – and he is there for a reason. It is a work in progress but even now is a powerful and often very beautiful production. 
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There are two recognised writers at the heart of this work, both well known for their gift of the gab and mining rich veins of cultural life with quick wit and intelligence. Yet both Mark Twain and playwright David Geary feel strangely absent from the centre of this production.

A surreal twisting of fact and fiction, Mark Twain and Me in Maoriland was inspired by a true life event. In Whanganui on a lecture tour of New Zealand in 1895 Twain upset some of the locals by suggesting that the monument at Moutoa Gardens honouring Maori loyal to the British should be blown up for encouraging them to be disloyal to their own race. [More]
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Much of New Zealand’s colonial history has been recorded from a British perspective yet few probably realise that a prominent American travelling through the country in the mid 1890’s made some rather astute observations on our then race relations which didn’t go down well with his fellow Europeans.

The American was Mark Twain, on a world wide speaking tour to raise money to pay off debts.  Arriving in NZ he visited many towns including Whanganui which is where David Geary obtained ideas for his play Mark Twain & Me in Maoriland.
Yet while the play shows up Twain’s own attitudes toward colonialism, organised religion, and racism, he himself almost becomes superfluous, his writings acting as a mirror to reflect what was happening in Whanganui at the time. 

And it is the Maori aspect at the heart of the play that works most successfully. In a series of vignettes using various types of theatre styles including vaudeville, western style movies, narrative and mixing dramatic realism with elements of the surreal, numerous incidences occurring in Whanganui at that time are portrayed.

Symbols of the present are also incorporated into the production such as the bright orange plastic bag over Twain’s head and the half filled plastic water bottle as a paddle, the sound of the water sloshing most effective.

Considered a super star of the period Twain (Stephen Papps) is introduced at various times to the populace of Whanganui during entertainment evenings at the Oddfellows Hall. He is taken up the river, and then spends much of his time sitting and observing and writing about what he sees and hears.

The simple set of a large white canvass across the stage running right up to the back wall and beyond, no doubt symbolising the river, with black curtains is effectively used by the confident and spirited cast.

Under John Bolton’s direction, they bring much physicality and dexterity to their performances. In particular is the hilariously funny vaudeville double act of the Anglican priest (Aaron Cortesi) and Roman Catholic priest (Allan Henry) in complete contrast to the creative and dramatic battle on Moutoa Island between the Hau-hau and local Whanganui Maori with Ra (Maaka Pohatu), assisted by Piki (Ngapaki Emery), leading the charge in spectacular fashion.

And although the many threads don’t always weave this production into a satisfying whole it is nevertheless another commendable NZ production giving a fascinating insight into a little known piece of NZ history that resonant as much with today as it does with the past aptly summed up in the words of Mark Twain: “history may not repeat, but it sure does rhyme a lot.”
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This is the second homegrown world premiere in the NZ International Arts Festival 2010 and the first to be unambiguously set in New Zealand. “Weaving historical fact with magical realism,” the brochure tells us, “Mark Twain & Me in Mâoriland fuses a spaghetti western with an epic love story.”

I will hazard a guess that whatever the publicity material and your knowledge of David Geary’s previous plays may have led you to expect, Mark Twain & Me in Mâoriland will prove to be something else. Yes guns are toted and there is a self-serving mayor, corrupting clerics and vaudeville. There is plenty of humour. But a bullet-ridden spaghetti western pastiche it is not – thank goodness. As for the love story …

They key is the Me in the title: Ra. He is a kupapa Mâori whose family was massacred by the Hauhau (the European name for Pai Marire, founded by Te Ua Haumene to deliver its followers from European domination. Pai Marire means ‘Good and Peaceful’ but believing the messianic Te Ua’s weaving of Old Testament, Psalms of David and Mâori spiritual elements gave them the power to defeat the Europeans, his followers took up arms. A group which came down the Whanganui River in May 1864 was defeated at Moutoa Island by tribes of the lower river, who were credited with saving the town of Wanganui.)*  

An ailing Mark Twain, whose debt-reducing international tour brought him to New Zealand in 1895, incurs the wrath of the Wanganui establishment by declaring that the Moutoa Gardens statue should be dynamited for glorifying the kupapa who fought against the country’s “true patriots.” (He actually wrote it in his diary but in the play he says it aloud.)

As directed by John Bolton, a less-is-more use of the physical theatre vocabulary delivers the ‘magic realism’ dimension with confidence. Indeed the whole show may be seen as a confidence trick, in that under the guise of telling the ‘Twain in Mâoriland’ story, the play confronts us with aspects of our history that are rarely acknowledged let alone understood, and which remain unresolved today.

From knowing very little about this episode, I emerge from 75 minutes of riveting theatre feeling in my bones that I have absorbed a deeply empathetic awareness of how it was for the kupapa, the ‘Hauhau’, the colonial ‘establishment’ and Mark Twain. And later I reach for my history books to seek the detail and language to convey it in words.

The play starts with Ra taking Twain, encased in a large orange plastic bag, up the river – against the current – in a waka, denoted by two school chairs, with a half-filled water bottle used as the paddle providing the evocative sound effect. The sense of menace and bewilderment, the way they shout at each other in mutual fear, and the way Twain pisses into the water bottle to gain painful relief, serves as an abstract ‘dumb show’ prologue to the play that follows. It is also an image we return to, each time with a greater understanding of how Twain has got himself into this predicament.

Maaka Pohatu’s Ra is a powerful presence whose rationale for his actions, pleasure in the power a firearm gives him and inner torment at the result, and alienation from his people, are slowly and surely revealed.

The “true patriot” Mâori position is embodied in a beautifully centred, strong and commanding Piki, as played by Ngapaki Emery, who is also part of the vaudeville ensemble representing the wider Wanganui community.

The populist trombone-playing and would-be comedian Mayor is satirically captured by Aaron Cortesi while Allan Henry relishes the role of the venal Roman Catholic Missionary Father Lampila. In concert with Cortesi’s Anglican cleric, their bizarre double act speaks volumes for the corrosive influence they had.

Stephen Papps plays a wonderfully droll Mark Twain, often introspective, obliging with the one-liners and ever in search of the story: the compulsive writer incarnate.

There is a point in the play where the ‘present’ story of his visit gives way to his attempt to write a story based on what happened in 1864. He scribbles in chalk on the black side stages while observing, and sometimes attempting to influence, the recreation that plays out on the vast roll of ‘paper’ that is Katarzyna Pol’s set (assisted by Jessica Sanderson).

This is where the ‘love story’ comes in. It has nothing to do with romance. It is about trying to reconcile the two Mâori perspectives in the wake of the Moutoa Island massacre, vividly indicated by coats and blankets strewn about the off-white stage, as large water containers pound out the sound of musket fire.  

In contrast to the tone of the publicity, every firearm and every death that results is given its due. Of all the battles I’ve seen on stage and screen, this minimalist treatment has had the most effect.

The songs composed by John Gibson and either sung in a capella harmonies or accompanied by such instruments as banjo, triangle and tissue-covered comb, are exquisite, as are the (presumably traditional) waiata.  

There are times when Henry steps un-theatrically on to the stage to inform us of certain historical facts. While this has clarifying value and serves to remind us that this is a theatrical contrivance created to give us access to ‘the truth’, it makes me wonder if the work is not still in transition from a somewhat more conventional script to this manifestation.

Part of me wants to say can we have more clarity embedded into the action itself while another has to concede that, through some sort of alchemy or sleight-of-theatre, I have come away thoroughly imbued with its import and meaning.

It is with extraordinary skill and profound insight that Mark Twain & Me in Mâoriland explores this crucial part of our history, staking its claim as an important new play and a taonga to be treasured as part of this festival as it enters the ongoing repertoire.
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*Summarised from Michael King’s The Penguin History of New Zealand (2003), p 216. And I’ve stuck with the spelling of the time for Wanganui the town and Whanganui the river.
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