Pacific Underground’s influence as a landmark theatre company has deeply shaped our nation’s theatre canon, particularly through works such as Dawn Raids, A Frigate Bird Sings and Niu Sila. So The Court Theatre’s revival of seminal Fresh off the Boat, the very first play Pacific Underground ever did (in 1993), is a significant acknowledgement of the company’s place within the New Zealand’s cultural landscape.

Co-written by Oscar Kightley and Simon Small, the play fuses family sitcom with domestic tragedy in equal measure. While evidently a product of the 90s, instead of trying to resist this, director Tanya Muagututi’a’s production leans into the time period, evoking the nostalgic aura of a bygone era. The only textual adjustments are in relocating it from Auckland to Christchurch, which only accentuates a city that exists in the landscape of memory, a Christchurch yet to be threatened by the calamity of earthquakes. [More] 

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Fresh Off The Boat begins in the heart of Samoa and envelops us in the warmth, ease and humour of life in the islands: cricket Samoan-style, the forever preparation of food and the hundreds of jobs a big family does for its loved ones. And then it leaves and takes a plane to Aotearoa and that’s where the real fun begins.

This foundational Pasifika theatre work by Oscar Kightley and Simon Small, first staged in 1993, follows the journey of Charles Malepe (Jake Arona) who arrives ‘fresh off the boat’ from Samoa to Christchurch to live with his sister Elizabeth (Sela Faletolu-Fasi), and nieces Evotia (Talia-Rae Mavaega) and Ula (Josphine Mavaega). He comes in search of milk and honey; however, it doesn’t take long before “the milk has gone sour and the honey is not so sweet.”

The family is headed by Elizabeth, who has learned how to get ahead in New Zealand by becoming fa’apalagi; by assimilating to the white New Zealand way and making the decision not to teach her children the Samoan language and culture so they can also get ahead and be ‘real Kiwis’ in the land of their birth. This has worked well for Elizabeth: she is successful, her daughter is a star netball player and she has a happy relationship with her palagi partner Mervyn (Roy Snow). Charles’ arrival upsets the life Elizabeth has built in New Zealand and he also begins a journey of his own he doesn’t expect.

Tanya Muagututia, who acted in the original 1993 play, directs with great attention to theva – the Samoan concept of relational space. She nurtures the va between the characters, between the 90s and present day, between comedy and drama, between rhythm and movement and sound. Muagututi’a, a founding member of Pacific Underground, the first Pacific performing arts collective in Christchurch and one of the first in the country, is a musician and brings her musical sensibility to the piece infusing it with the warmth, ease and strength of the Samoan siva (dance), which appears in different incarnations throughout the play – whether Samoan, RnB 90s styles or silly hip hop handshakes styles.

Originally set in Auckland, this production is set in Christchurch with screen projections of long-gone Christchurch icons: the Cathedral, the old airport – drawing gasps from audience.

Fresh Off The Boat might be best categorised as a dramedy. We are hit with funny one-liner after one-liner, often delivered by Samoa aka Englebert, a young friend of the Malepe family (played by Albany Peseta). Oscar Kightley played the original Samoa and has since become a well-known actor, writer and media personality. Twenty-six years on, it still gets the laughs that both a Pacific and palagi audience respond to. Samoa is a wannabe political activist and spends much of the play voicing the inequalities in New Zealand between Polynesians and palagi, and how they mirror the Black struggle in the USA. He speaks in the parlance of Malcolm X, however because Samoa is written as the clown in this play, all the very real issues he raises are lampooned.

This is problematic when a white audience is encouraged to laugh at, and not think past, the ‘funny’ of issues of racial politics which are as urgent today – perhaps more so in this global political climate – than they have ever been. Perhaps in the post-show dinner conversations, white theatre goers who have laughed at the gags might also think about the issues – who knows?

In this way, Fresh Off The Boat is a play of its time, written nearly three decades ago by two male writers looking for the laughs while also trying to explore some of the deeper issues that face migrants, the first generation NZers of Pacific heritage and the palagi people they interact with and often love. The female roles are written fairly one dimensionally and don’t have a huge scope for discovery or journey. However, again in Muagututia’s rendering, the women become part of the larger ‘siva’ and steal a number of the scenes with stunningly sung musical pieces. 

Jake Arona is standout in his portrayal of Charles (who is arguably the most complex character and has the greatest arc in the play) with subtlety and nuance. It would be easy to have overplayed this part but Arona does it with deep understanding and poignancy, walking a tightrope without falling off into a stereotype. By the end of the play, the character of Charles is backed into a corner and his role may not elicit much sympathy from the audience as the script doesn’t give a lot of room to shift entrenched prejudices of Pacific men as violent, irresponsible and irrational.

Fresh Off The Boat is a warm, funny, intelligent production of an iconic Pasifika play. It gathers us all in and gives us an opportunity to start the conversation around Pacific people and the challenges of prejudice in an inclusive way that highlights the aspiration of New Zealanders to understand each other in our diversity and beyond our stereotypes.   

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