Paul Holmes: Talent brings P tragedy to life

Keisha Castle-Hughes shot to bewildering fame. Photo / Norrie Montgomery

Keisha Castle-Hughes got in touch with me this week. I know, name dropper.

I hadn't seen Keisha since that dizzying and - I suppose because she was so young - bewildering period of fame that engulfed her after the release of Whale Rider over half a decade ago.

I always felt for Keisha. She was too young to have come up with that stunning performance, especially that unforgettable speech in the hall about her grandfather.

By too young, I mean she was too young to understand how she did it. But do it she did.

When I saw her this week I told her - and I hope she wasn't offended - that she will never do such a scene again. She said that she had come to accept that. She is lovely, Keisha. Kind and engaging, funny to talk to.

Anyway, she wanted to tell me that she was involved in a film project, a drama, about the scourge of P in Auckland. She worried me on the phone, I must say. She called it a "comedy-drama". I don't think I'll ever see anything funny about P.

The producers, the scriptwriter and the cast were doing a full read-through on Friday morning, presenting the project to the Film Commission, and someone had suggested that Keisha give me a call and invite me along to watch and listen and perhaps to offer a comment or two about P.

I rolled up, met the cast, drank a coffee and they got under way.

Writer Rene Naufahu himself is something of a star - elegant, very smart and very fine.

Imagine this: There is no set. There is no stage. We are in a space not much bigger than a large living room, round at the old and beautifully restored St Columba Church in Ponsonby.

And what I saw and heard for the next hour-and-a-half was one of the most harrowing but also most wonderful and moving experiences I've had in the last few years.

I suppose I should have known of the actors but, apart from Keisha, I regretted that I did not. They are the young crowd. The new wave. They sat in a line at a long table facing us, an audience of about six.

Oliver Driver read what you might call the stage instructions - what the camera was seeing, sort of thing - so the whole thing became visual immediately. You got to know the way round people's houses and you travelled across the city in Tiger's car. Amazing, the power of the imagination.

The characters were great, sympathetic, each and every one of them, even the most dreadful raver, himself a victim of P addiction, of course. Central to the story is Minka, a young teenage boy with a P-addicted mother - who he can only protect by locking her up when he goes out.

He doesn't drink or smoke and he doesn't use P. And Minka loves his mum. Back on the scene is Dad, a wise, good-hearted, rough diamond Maori who runs a strip club.

And there's a girl Minka's age who lives down the hall. She calls herself Xena, after the Warrior Princess. This is Keisha. Keisha is marvellous to watch and to listen to. She has unique phrasing and brings a brilliant originality to every line she utters.

We can see once again that she is the real deal. They all were, that cast. This was just a reading but the power and the performances would make you laugh, frightened and make you cry. My God, it made me cry.

The film, if it gets made - and I hope it does and if there is justice it will because it is so well written - will break your heart but inspire you as well.

And every ghastly, destructive, insane, crazy, violent, terrifying thing about P was in there. I looked across at the young scriptwriter and thought: "You have seen too much. You've seen far too much."

I said so to him later. He nodded. We both understood.

But the joy of being there was not just seeing that someone had at last written the P movie or that it showed all the sides of the P phenomenon or that is was such a convincing and moving drama.

The joy was also in watching superb young actors work. It was the privilege of watching talent and being close to seeing it at work. They'd all done some work on their parts. They had all put a lot of thought and work already in to their characters.

There is nothing more wonderful than human talent, in whatever field it's expressed, and I just love seeing actors work. They were very good, these people, each and every one of them.

And they are committed to the issue, I think. A good few of them know quite a bit about the P issue and how it manifests itself in people, the carnage it reaps, the swathes of ruination it cuts, the hope it destroys, the talent it wastes and the hearts it breaks.

There is a line in that script in which Pinball, the raving addict, speaks quietly of desolation and asks another character if he knows what it is like to watch someone at the exact point at which their heart actually breaks.

It comes out of nowhere, the line, and I think that's what he said.

And my heart broke, again. It was all right, though. We're older now and wiser, and we have been through it all and crying over breaking hearts gets nothing done.

But in that little room, with those dear and clever people, my heart broke again.

If there is a God, that picture will get made.