KEY POINTS:
Playwright Victor Rodger has crafted an elegant revenge drama based around the 1953 movie Return to Paradise that had Gary Cooper - then one of America's hottest stars - filming a major motion picture in a remote Samoan village.
The play creates a platform for a Pacific Island voice that can speak back to an industry that carelessly uses romanticised visions of island life with scant regard for the diverse ways in which its visitations impact on the local population.
Robbie Magasiva plays a Samoan character who was named Gary Cooper after his mother entered into an ill-fated liaison with a member of the Return to Paradise film crew.
Magasiva effortlessly commands the stage and seems to be enjoying a role that allows him to knowingly toy with the sex-symbol status that is shamelessly exploited in the marketing of the play.
He nonchalantly encourages the flirtatious ogling of characters who are surrogates for the audience's prurience and hilariously strips down to his undies within a few minutes of arriving unannounced at the home of a Hollywood photographer.
The script provides plenty of material for more serious acting, especially in the Samoan episodes where Magasiva's character learns the truth about his father and has to deal with the suicide of a mother who always resented him.
Unfortunately, Roy Ward's heavy-handed direction turns these scenes into hysterical melodrama and destroys the poignancy that might have come with more restrained performances.
The gritty realism of the Samoan perspective is convincingly brought home by Anapela Polataivao's portrayal of a hardcase prostitute. Nora Aati gives a moving performance as Gary Cooper's abandoned mother, though there is little opportunity for her to move beyond the despair of a jilted lover.
The American characters seem more fully drawn. Goretti Chadwick is lively and engaging as a film studies student with ambivalent views on Hollywood's representation of Pacific Islanders, and Jennifer Ward-Lealand gives a nuanced sketch of a fading starlet in a loveless marriage.
Liesha Ward Knox and Damien Harrison are both appealing as the bratty twins who convincingly evoke the aimless ennui of 70s teen culture.
The play's most dramatic moments come when the Gary Cooper character confronts the father who abandoned him at birth, but the sheer perversity of his revenge - which casually brushes aside the incest taboo - struck me as unsatisfying.
But if some aspects of the production seem unresolved, the play certainly moves beyond the familiar Samoan stereotypes and greatly extends the range of Pacific Island writing.
