“…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.” John Donne  

All credit to AOTNZ for bringing this much-praised three-hander to twenty towns and cities throughout New Zealand.  It is Nelson’s turn and a good and quiet audience is totally involved with the stories of Minnie Dean and Victor Spencer – the cafe management’s decision to stop service during the play is respectful and appreciated. 

There are the boots and shoes – all black – lined up along the front of the stage.  Nowhere to walk and no feet to walk in them.  Such a powerful image – unforgettable- so simple and yet huge.  Verity, tall in a long black coat, delivers her narrative with seeming detachment.  In the part, Angela Newell is convincing, even chilling in her role as our representative for ‘justice’.  Verity: truth, death or revenge?  She is superb. 

Both Lizzie Dawson as Dean and Jade Gillies as Spencer are real and believable.  Dean with her Bible, Spencer with his tremor, are islands in their little parts of the stage.  The clever thing about this play is that the two very different stories, told simultaneously, mesh together seamlessly. Dean and Spencer together sing ‘Now Is the Hour’ and ‘How Great Thou Art’, one in English the other in te reo. Combined with the sounds of Maori instruments (Richard Nunn?) and marching feet, these are incredibly moving. 

Technician Adrian Mann deserves special mention.  He who controls the lights and sound does splendidly, especially as the computer develops a glitch and he has to cope manually.   

Dean, found guilty of infanticide was hung in 1895. Spencer is the last of three New Zealand soldiers, shot at dawn under British Military Rule in the First World War. Spencer has, eventually, been pardoned posthumously – the jury is still out on Minnie Dean.

The worst thing about it all is that terrible events still happen.  There is more than an echo from this excellent play in our world of today. John Donne said it all.

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There was more than a touch of southern gothic in the Lowburn Hall last night, as three Southlanders enacted the last hours of one notorious and one largely unknown Southlander.

As a child growing up in Southland, the name Minnie Dean (the “Winton baby-farmer”) would send a shiver down my spine, but I had never heard the name Victor Spencer. Both, however, were executed for their alleged crimes: Dean was the only woman hanged in New Zealand (1895, Invercargill, for child murder), while Spencer was shot by a firing squad (1918, Belgium, for desertion).

Too Far from Heaven dramatises the last hours of their lives, played in tandem on a small stage, linked via the role of narrator /executioner /confidante (Verity, played by Angela Newell).

The show runs for an intense hour, moving deftly from one doomed figure to the other, recounting their crimes and something of their lives. Lizzie Dawson’s portrayal of Minnie Dean is the strongest, possibly because of the amount of information the playwrights had to draw on (apparently Dean wrote for four hours the night before she was executed, while there were a scant four lines from Victor’s pen). Jade Gillies, as Victor Spencer, however, brings the carefree young Victor to life, and his very physical portrayal of shell-shock is simply distressing to watch. 

Newell’s delivery isn’t always convincing, but her contemporary language and inflection may be a device to bring the issues she touches on starkly into the present (most obviously the death penalty, but there are plenty of others, including social and military values and religion). 

Some of the most poignant moments are created through music, in particular a joint rendition of Whakaaria Mai sung in Te Reo (Spencer) and English (Dean).

The histories brought to life on stage became that much closer after the show, when southern connections in the small audience were revealed. Audience members included a direct descendent of Minnie Dean, an elderly woman who remembered the Dean family and who danced on Dean’s grave as a child, and a spry 93-year-old woman who was delivered into the world by a midwife who had worked for Dean as a 14-year-old girl. This woman understood that her father was a member of Dean’s initial, abandoned, jury.

The local arts council spokesperson also drew attention to the plaque on the wall, which named 18 Lowburn men killed during World War I. The post-show chill in the air wasn’t a southern frost: it came from the vivid recreation of two lives and the context around their tragic ends. Far from heaven; close to home.

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