Whangarei and Gisborne have already had the pleasure; now it’s Wellingtonians’ turn, every day until Tuesday (2pm or 7pm), to immerse themselves in the story of the Kermadecs – Aotearoa’s northern-most islands – amid some of the artworks that have inspired this Company of Giants production.

Described as ‘a live installation experience’ and directed by Laurel Devenie with a multi-generational cast headed by Kelly Johnson and Jan Fisher, RANGITAHUA: The Stopping off Place is a dramatic response to elements of the Kermadec: Discoveries and Connections exhibition currently at the Academy Galleries at the entrance to Queens Wharf.

Live tableaux ranging from 14^th century flax-weaving to 21^st century bird-cataloguing adorn the gallery as we take our first opportunity to survey the works*  and gain a sense of the human history (there’s more time to engage with them after the show). A conch draws us to the story of the first arrivals, by waka, of those we now call Māori, who brought all they needed to start a new life, including plants and animals.  

We are treated to part of the legend of Turi (progenitor of the Whanganui iwi); the tale of portents, slaughter and revenge that provoked this migration and brought them to this ‘stopping off place’: the island they named Rangitahua.

Of course the British and French knew nothing of this history when they ‘discovered’ the volcanic arc of six islands and renamed them the Kermadec Islands, calling the main island Raoul (the French) then Sunday Island (the Brits).

A massive rope evokes the entry of whalers to the islands. Song and dance blends the cultures. Then comes the dumping of diseased and dying slaves from Tokelau, being traded by Peruvian blackbirders who told then they were being taken to a ‘better life’. On Rangitahua/ Raoul/ Sunday Island, the basic instinct of human compassion clashes with the danger of further infection.

By now I am sensing how much of this microcosmic story resonates into the timeless stories of how humans seeking out new opportunities, or otherwise finding themselves in new environments, interact with each other. The same themes permeate the daily news now.

Although attracted by the idea he could be “king of his own island”, the pioneer spirit is captured in the substantive story of Thomas Bell (Kelly Johnson), his wife Frederica (Jan Fisher) and their many children. Sustained in the evenings by the Bible and a volume of Shakespeare’s plays – which allows juicy quotes from the Bard to be dropped into the text at appropriate moments – Bell and his family toil for 36 years (1877-1913) through much adversity, famously establishing a substantial garden.

“Remember, pride is a sin,” Thomas tells is family as they pose for a photograph, before dispersing to various parts of New Zealand.

The final phase of the ‘live installation’ shows and tells of more recent activity on the Islands, by DOC workers and volunteers, leading up to their being declared an ocean sanctuary just last year. Here we are reminded of the force of nature and our place as part of it, not its dominator.

Likewise RANGITAHUA: The Stopping off Place is presented without ego, in symbiosis with the art works and its ever-mobile audience. Beautifully rendered waiata flow throughout the storytelling too. It is astonishing to realise how much history, hitherto unknown to so many of us, we have absorbed so effortlessly in less than an hour through engaging with performing and visual arts.

*Works by Phil Dadson, Bruce Foster, Fiona Hill, Gregory O’Brien, Jason O’Hara, John Pule, John Reynolds, Elizabeth Thomson and Robin White.
See Bronwen Golder’s essay here. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

I am always pleased to see the work (any work) of Laurel Devenie and her latest offering – Rangitahua, the Stopping-Off Place – proves to be no exception to the rule. 

It isn’t a play; it’s probably best described as an exhibition, a series of tableaux vivants, illustrating the often unhappy history of Rangitahua – the Kermadec Islands – which lie about midway between northern New Zealand and Tonga. 

It is a terrific metaphor for all the islands of the South Pacific, and the almost fatal collision with the arriving colonisers.

I suppose very few of us know much about the Kermadecs, other than they are there, and Ms Devenie and her group do us an enormous favour by showing us the history. It starts with arrival of Māori on the waka and goes on to the coming of the whalers and traders and missionaries, all finding a small paradise and gradually destroying the very thing they might have sought: heaven on earth.

Originally, just a stopping-off place for rest, water and ship repairs, with human beings came rats, which none-too-gradually almost overcame the native fauna. There were attempts at creating a community, most notably by Thomas Bell and his family, and this, perhaps, is the most disturbing part of the history. 

The suggestion is made that Bell’s attraction to the islands is that they were essentially uninhabited, a place where he could be king. Such stories litter the history of the islands and it wasn’t just men, nor were all the islands un-inhabited. There is the extraordinary tale of Emma Coe, a Samoan princess who became known as the Queen of New Guinea. 

They were all guided by similar if differing impulses: the desire to make money in an unfettered, unstructured location or the missionary zeal to create a ‘perfect’ society, meaning a society where their ideals ruled. These are rich and complex tales, but often deeply disturbing, and perhaps that is the reason we know so little about them. A shroud of moral decency has been wrapped around them, and perhaps we prefer not to have to make moral judgements. (The world was outraged by the activities by of Joseph Hatch, who made a fortune killing penguins for their oil on Macquarie Island, but he couldn’t see the moral difference between slaughtering sheep and cattle and slaughtering penguins. I’m not sure that I can see that difference.)

With hindsight, we can say that Thomas Bell’s experiment on ‘his’ Karmadec island was doomed to failure (who were his children going to marry?) but these explorers and entrepreneurs – and missionaries – gave us the world in which we live today. The terrific Kelly Johnson, as Bell, sharpens the paradox because we can be filled with admiration for his guts and determination, and even some of his ideals, but we also understand that what he sought was probably both unachievable and undesirable – an island where he was king. 

The exhibition doesn’t attempt to answer these questions; it is content to show the history and let us draw our own conclusions, and some of our answers might be disturbing to us. Eventually, Bell was banished by bureaucracy and the Department of Conservation carpet-bombed the islands with poison to get rid of the exotic species – the destructive rats and feral cats – and all the goats were shot. But even as I applaud the extinction of the rats and cats, I wonder what native species were destroyed along the way? Isn’t 1080 indiscriminate?

So it was a fascinating and quite disturbing hour of my life. It isn’t great drama in any usual sense but the tale it tells is essentially dramatic and important: an hour of moral complexity to which I can find very few answers. Part of me now wants to go there and see for myself, and part of me is certain that we’ve done enough damage already and should leave ’em alone. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer