KEY POINTS:
There is nothing derivative of Shakespeare's classic in Lemi Ponifasio's stunning new work, apart from it dealing with the subject of unfairly wielded power.
Ponifasio's Tempest opens with the video image of Algerian refugee/"terrorist" Ahmed Zaoui's face, motionless apart from an occasional slow blink, and a projected summary of the events that led to him still being confined to a Mt Eden monastery from 10pm until 6am nightly on the strength of secret information passed to the New Zealand Government by French and Belgian authorities.
In front of the screen stretches a plain, broad stage with two benches to one side. In the half-light, a solitary figure in a rustling skirt glides to and fro vanishing, reappearing. "Tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch tch ..."
A second figure appears and waits quietly on the bench.
It is Tame Iti, Tuhoe, Maori activist, another man living a life, as he sees it, of cultural, spiritual and personal restraint.
The light increases. He stands, walks forward, a surprisingly short and broad warrior with a familiar magnificent facial tattoo, and he takes all present hostage with his first rich barrage of oratory.
In Maori his voice is warm, sonorous, at times as gentle as a lamb, gorgeously melodic, always strong. In English he plays with the coarsely colloquial.
He speaks his story in words and gesture, illustrated at times with projected images - landscapes, confrontations, portraits of handsome, sad kuia.
It is a story that ranges from writing 500 schoolboy's lines "I will not speak Maori", through mass relocation of young Maori to the cities where they stood in cinemas to sing God Save the Queen, through the battle for te reo, and Dame Whina Cooper's 1975 Land March.
Another moonlike image, and this time three skirted figures are gliding with the "tch tch" sound.
Maybe they represent the Children of the Mist. A recorded accompaniment rumbles like the earth, gnawing and gnashing in its bowels. A magnificent haka. The shock of a fired gun.
Then Tame Iti again, with a final prayer for the end of disconnection, oppression, of enslavement by the philosophies of others, and for the freedom to dream one's own dreams, for Te Mana Motuhake o Tuhoe.
And if you are still not sure of what that means - you can ask Tame, or someone else, over soup and spuds, at the end. But Ahmed Zaoui is back in his lock-up by then.
