Theatre Review: My Penina Herald Theatre

Iaheto Ah Hi (left), Fiona Collins and Aleni Tufuga. Photo / Sarah Ivey

With just three actors, three simple chairs and a spread of woven mats, Fiona Collins creates a little masterpiece in My Penina, encompassing enduring love, the pull and power of family and the stress fractures that form in lives caught between cultures and traditions.

For palagi the work offers a precious invitation to share in an intimate moment of Samoan reflection and preparation for a celebration - a 49th wedding anniversary. For the many Samoan members of the opening night audience, it would surely have felt like coming home.

Sitting somewhere between western theatre convention and traditional Samoan story-telling, with elements of dance and straight drama, the work uses swathes of both Samoan and English language.

Those who could follow the Samoan dialogue were frequently in fits of delighted laughter. For those who could not, the actors' movements and luminous faces were enough to follow a perhaps less embroidered but still articulate story line, much of it poignant, much of it very, very funny.

Collins plays two characters, Aniva and her granddaughter Kristina. Aleni Tufuga is husband Pelenato and Iaheto Ah Hi is Malaea, the fa'afafine friend and keeper of the elderly couple's house and welfare.

Costume changes are unnecessary for Collins, clad in a full length dress of Samoan modesty and neutral hue. A flick of her hair, from tightly controlled bun to free flow is enough, along with that luminosity of facial expression, to switch between her two roles.

Both she and Tufuga embellish their performance with the sweetest of voices and Ah Hi skilfully clarifies the blessed and special role of the fa'afafine in Samoan society - without missing a beat of its comic opportunity.

Collins' story is sweetly told - but not without a masterly building of mystery and tension. What is the cause of Aniva and and Pele's sense of shame, the darkness that underlines their "good life"?

It seems more pressing than Pele's loss of a father on Black Saturday, and the Mau uprising. It runs deeper than Aniva's refusal to forgive her dead son. It is stronger than the anger and indignity of the Dawn Raids.

You may or may not discover it. But in either case Collins' carefully wrought and beautiful "pearl" is a love story to touch your heart with its universality of soul.