Brave Theatre and Circa Theatre have welcomed summer (at last) and kissed the ‘silly season’ goodbye with a profoundly engaging production of a brand-new play by Jenny Pattrick: Hope. Punctuated with humour, insightful and dark, its moral dilemmas are gradually revealed.

I approach opening night with mixed feelings about the word ‘hope’. Hearing it resorted to by myself or others invariably makes me think, if not say, “There is no hope without purpose, a plan and action to make it happen.” Of course if you’ve done all you can to bring about whatever you want or need, all that’s left is to hope that the powers that be will grant your wish/ application/ prayer. But these days, the laps of the gods are heavy-laden. And some ‘gods’ serve vested interests.

Hope begins in a state of apparent hopelessness. Adam (Jack Buchanan) on a bridge – literal and metaphorical – is encountered by Daniel (Tāmata Porter; she/they) who asks for his watch. Even as we laugh at this outrage, our moral compasses are wavering as we instinctively try to decode the circumstances. Is this venality, humanity or simple pragmatism?

The theme is set. Time is key. Hope is set in the near future.

Designer Ian Harman enriches a pokey bed-sit set with asymmetrical walls adorned with intriguing mosaics of delicately drawn flowers and leaves disrupted by elements only closer inspection would reveal: tables and chairs stacked up; a life disrupted by war and circumstance. They reference the beautiful mosaics of the Ukraine, many of which have been destroyed. (I am indebted to Ian for disclosing these details).

Marcus McShane’s lighting design, sensitively operated by Janis Chen, highlights the mosaics as this ‘home’ is revealed, establishing a plane of existence beyond the prosaic reality of this grounded time and place. Chris Ward’s design also supports subjective realities as objective truths emerge.

The performances of all four actors, teased out by director Lyndee-Jane Rutherford, are exquisitely rendered both in themselves and within their various and sometimes volatile relationships. The complexities inherent in the challenges they face and wrestle with are riveting.

Here’s where I need to add a warning: my attempt to honour the quality of this work may include spoilers, although nothing I write can undermine the pleasure you will experience in witnessing the live production. You may, however, prefer to book now then read on after you’ve seen it.

It becomes apparent that Irina (Perry Piercy), a semi-bedridden refugee from Kharkiv (in Ukraine’s northeast), is being cared for by Daniel, her son. Once a valued piano teacher, she has downsized from a large home that housed a concert grand to this, which can only accommodate an electric keyboard. It is here that her daughter Yulia (Mel Dodge), a nurse, finds her at last. She is simultaneously relieved and angry that her mother didn’t let her know she was moving.

While Yulia was in the Ukraine, tending wounded soldiers and observing the atrocities of war, before returning to work in NZ, Irina has remained wedded to Russian TV and her implacable admiration of the late President Putin, now dead following a coup. Despite her frustration, is there any point in Yulia trying to change her mother’s position, given she is Classified, under the recently enacted Last Year of Life Bill? The state decrees she may only have palliative care: liquid morphine eye-dropped orally.

Irina is also susceptible to alternative medicines, like a very specific Greek yoghurt ardently tele-marketed to Classified people. Is this compassion or exploitation? As for the treatment Daniel is scoring on the black market for intravenous application … This becomes a major point of contention between Yulia and Daniel, and given the shortage of legal medicines brought about by cutbacks in health funding, there is no easy answer as to who should be privileged over others.  

Meanwhile, having discovered Daniel’s mother is his much revered first piano teacher, Adam – who has since found fame as a concert pianist – is brought to visit Irina. Their delighted reunion is undercut by his revealing he has contracted focal dystonia in his right hand. Apparently incurable, it has destroyed his career. But the redoubtable Irina won’t hear of defeat, citing the case of the renowned Michael Houstoun who dedicated five gruelling years to retraining his brain so that he could play again.

In a beautiful blend of fact and fiction, Houstoun himself has recorded almost all the music – composed by Briar Prastiti – that is played throughout, both as part of the action and in Irina’s mind.

So where does ‘hope’ fit into all this? Daniel’s actions are bringing hope for a longer life to Irina and giving him a purpose that offsets the mental health issues inherent in his quest for gender identity. Irina finds new energy in taking on Adam’s rehabilitation as a project – and Adam realises life doesn’t have to be over for him. This purpose-fuelled chain reaction clearly brings new hope and quality of life all round.

Except for Yulia – who, by the way, has a new boyfriend, provoking premature delight in Irina at the prospect of grandchildren. That becomes another humour-riddled bone of contention over the advisability of bringing babies into this world. Initially Yulia’s insistence on obeying the law, even to the extent of betraying a family member (shades of the regime from which Irina fled), seems shocking. Yet the arguments for considering the ‘greater good’ over the forlorn hopes of the terminally ill are compelling, under the circumstances – which may or may not need to be this way.

These dilemmas are very present in our lives, even more so today than when Pattrick began to develop the play, provoked by her doctor observing “that a large percentage of hospital resources went to patients in their last year of life.” In her programme note she juxtaposes her watching her husband (Laughton, the revered music and singing teacher whose motor neuron disease was untreatable) “accept his lack of hope and die peacefully” with her awareness of how her friend Michael Houstoun overcame his apparently insoluble condition to revive his love of playing.

The intelligence, compassion and political astuteness Pattrick has brought to this, her first play for adults (in the wake of many productions for children, created with Laughton, and her highly successful historical novels) is cause for resounding celebration – not least given she’s 89! Hope deserves a very long life in theatres throughout Aotearoa New Zealand and indeed the wider world.

Don’t miss it.

P.S. The revamped Circa Theatre foyer is splendid. Must book for a meal there soon – or even drop in to the café/restaurant during the day.

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