Writer and director Nancy Brunning has achieved a difficult feat. All the characters in her family drama - about how politics should begin at home - are sympathetic. Mum and dad may be diametrically opposed, and the kids might call each other "eggs", but for the most part, we understand their motivations better than they understand each other. We care for them, and this makes the play - although occasionally heavy-handed - genuinely affecting.
Wife Nellie is increasingly committed to the Maori rights protest movement while husband Charlie stalwartly refuses to think it has anything to do with him. Why would you bother over just a rugby match, he asks when she comes home from a Springbok Tour protest.
Here, then, is the choice: between being apathetic and being away on hikoi. The upshot is that their five children are neglected for their parents' good causes (providing and protesting), and so don't speak te reo. On their own personal hikoi, wandering the forest like children in a fairytale, they even refer to themselves as "Marrees".
Smart writing and natural acting (led by Aroha White and Kura Forrester) bring the teenage characters to life as individuals rather than as chorus. Their rough-housing and needling make for some of the best scenes; black humour comes from their innocent spouting of racist myths about Maori.
The end scene leaves reality behind and veers between farce and foreboding; a revenge dream is turned into a self-regulated family conference where everyone is articulate and patient. Pure fantasy - but why not?
