I wasn’t able to get to last week’s reading of Moana Ete’s Ships at the Matariki Development Festival 2014 but I did see the development seasons of Aroha White’s 2080 and Nancy Brunning’s Hikoi (to premiere at next year’s Auckland Festival), and the rehearsed reading of Hone Kouka’s Bless The Child. None were to be reviewed but constructive feedback was garnered in various ways, most impressively, from what I witnessed, in the open forum that followed Bless the Child. The constructive rigour and generosity of all involved was exemplary.

Now the Backyard Theatre production of Ships has opened at the Gryphon, directed by its playwright Moana Ete, who is also in it. Ete, who graduated from Toi Whakaari in 2010, cut her playwriting and directing teeth at the Gryphon with Kapitall Kids’ Theatre – The Boy Who Cried Wolf (July 2013); Racecars Vs Cupcakes (April 2014) – and now Ships is her first adult play. She brings a unique voice to her writing here.

That all the characters are named for sea-going vessels alerts us immediately to this being more than a naturalistic tale. The play is set aboard The Great Australasia Cruise where five young adults have taken their hospitality skills to make money, explore the world and have fun.  

Kaya (Ete) – short for kayak – works the Blue Lagoon bar and restaurant and is best friends with Tanker (Andrew Patterson), the only Pakeha /Palagi in the ‘fleet’, who is gay and about to marry Va’a (Manuel Soloman), relatively new on the scene and not trusted by Kaya. Her brother Navy (Kesava Beaney) is also on board, along with Dinghy (Braedyn Togi) who turns out to be the little brother of Kaya’s ex boyfriend, Raft (also played by Solomon).

All five actors claim their roles convincingly and their difference – and changing – ways of being contribute to a well modulated and dynamically paced production.

The festivities and stresses around the wedding, and the working routines of shipboard life – as the cruise arrives and departs Wellington harbour and heads for Samoa – give the play a narrative structure where romance and escapism rub up against their responsibilities and human frailties. But these relatively self-absorbed ‘Gen Y’ issues are destined to collide with a much more lethal threat that lurks on the high seas.

Ngā Tamariki O Tangaroa, an extremist environmental activist group, is attacking vessels it sees as a threat to the dying ocean. Their anonymous presence – the activists, played by the aforementioned actors, cover their faces with black stockings – is heard and felt throughout the play, building up to their inevitable boarding of this floating palace of pleasure.

The play includes no overt polemical debate between the hedonists and the activists. There is sloganeering in the dark that offsets the more indulgent concerns of the ‘cruisers’ but their value systems versus the environmentalists’ escalation of their activism to the level of killing people are simply givens of the circumstances. Even when the threat is at its greatest, the quintet we’ve come to know and like still only show concern for themselves and each other. And what it comes down to, when all seems lost, is: who do you want to know you love them?

While this suggests a fatalism among the shipmates, it does leave us with something to think about, albeit in very broad terms.

Dinghy keeps a notebook in which he writes his musings – romantic paeans to ships that carry boats, or are they boats that carry ships? – and it is his words that book-end the play. While I have a sense this is intended to elucidate an allegory, I can’t say it registers dramatically for me. Is it as simple as suggesting we are all part of each other’s world and so we need to ‘carry’ each other; that disfferent-sized vessels in the same ocean need to coexist harmoniously?

The staging is sort of in the traverse. Banks of seats face each other across what is normally the stage while seats that face the ‘stage’ remain. On opening night Dinghy stands at the cross point facing the auditorium which means he is facing away from most of the audience for what, in essence, is a monologue. The staging works best when everyone can see into the space between the interacting characters. (Each school holidays Backyard theatre and Kapitall Kids Theatre – who are doing The Dragon of Doom this time – share the space.)

The media release for Ships declares it is about relationships, be they romantic, kindred, professional, casual or spiritual. Fair enough – it does do that. And it seems to want to resonate more deeply in exploring those themes at the level of passion, and in questioning when, where and why such passions can destroy relationships. Perhaps that’s there already and a director who wasn’t also the writer and actor might be in a better position to delineate it more dramatically. Or maybe it’s just that this staging diffuses the focus and so defuses the ‘message’.  

Either way I have no doubt Moana Ete is a playwright to watch.

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