UNITEC’s Year 3 acting students bravely take on the arduous task of staging British playwright David Edgar’s play about politics, puns and paintings. Pentecost is an epic play on many levels: its three hour duration; its frenzied 20 characters on stage in their fragmented ethnic representations and cultural identities; and its heavy-handed social commentary. 

The play is set circa 1994, in an abandoned church in an unnamed eastern European country (Serbia or Bulgaria, most likely), which has been governed by various conquerors and religions over the past forty years; the most recent being a one-party communist system lead by Slobodan Miloševiæ (if it is Serbia) – overthrown by a multiparty democracy only in 1990. The context is a country is fraught with social turmoil, conflict, and loss of cultural –particularly European cultural – identity and contribution.

Native art curator Gabriella Pecs (played with commitment and authenticity by Maia Potier) brings British art historian Oliver Davenport (Jeremy Rodmell plays the gauche British intellectual to the tee) to the church, in the hopes that he will confirm that a painting she has discovered buried inside a brick wall of the church is in fact the hugely important national discovery she suspects it to be: a painting which would be as important a discovery to the art world as that of Pompeii.

The play goes on to debate the ownership and authenticity of the painting, which is suspected to be a precursor to Giotto’s iconic ‘Lamentation’ by an unknown ‘Eastern’ painter. Because the painting uses techniques that were to become the foundation of the Renaissance – combining styles of classicism, humanism and naturalism – its authentication would change the history of early medieval art (and the history of art in general) and the history and cultural identity of Serbia / unnamed eastern European country.

In the second half of the play, the painting is given even more significance, as it is given hostage status – along with the art historians and Gabriella – by a group of asylum seekers of sharply differentiated ethnicities being pursued by border patrol. To describe the plot of the second half would take up the rest of the review. Suffice it to say, Walt Disney would take notes. 

Coming away from the production, I was very impressed by how the UNITEC actors stood up to this (arguably malevolent) monster of a play, but I couldn’t help but wonder: could anyone pull it off; never mind third year drama students?

Pentecost has rarely been produced since it was written in 1994; partly because of its duration and huge cast, but also because of its complexity. When it has been produced, its reviews largely discuss the play itself – as there is so much going on that there is little time to consider the director’s interpretation and the actors’ performances. And that’s its biggest weakness. It is far too much about what the playwright is trying to say, and there’s no space for what the actors might want to say, or the director John G. Davies for that matter. 

I can see why it was chosen for a student production: how many plays are there out there that have 20 characters? But I feel that it would be better for a History class or an English literature tutorial rather than for a display of theatrical ability. There’s dramatic motivation and climax absolutely; but the play is too busy dissecting the word ‘climax’ and how it translates in different languages, and pointing out how poignant that is. 

These students do a fantastic job of performing such a play; in keeping the momentum going; making the characters’ stories as compelling as possible; and in committing to their character portrayals to boot. It is a hugely demanding play, physically, emotionally, intellectually. And it is no mean feat for these aspiring actors to make relatable what theatre critic Andrew Billen describes in The Spectator as being “a strange breed of humanoid word-generators [that occupy] the space Shakespeare would have left for human beings”.
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