Samoan Language Week runs until Samoan Independence Day on June 1, so the season of this bilingual play set about Mau - the non-violent Samoan independence movement - is timed very nicely.
Writer, director, producer and actor Pulotu Canada Alofa McCarthy sketches out the story of a young woman, Sinalei, in the 1920s, torn between her attraction to an occupying New Zealand policeman and her loyalty to family and country. (Amusingly, gossips say the couple have been seen "holding hands and doing unnecessary stuff".)
As context, the prologue voice-over tells of the horrific Spanish flu epidemic which killed a staggering 20 per cent to 25 per cent of the Western Samoan population after the New Zealand administration allowed an infected ship to land (this is what Helen Clark apologised to Samoa for in 2002; American Samoa suffered no deaths, thanks to a blockade).
The play's time sequence is confused but some new angles (to a non-Samoan at least) are presented on the history: there's a suggestion that Samoans' suspicion of their New Zealand "protectors" was intensified by knowing the Maori experience ("you people basically stole the whole country from under their feet", Sinalei tells her palagi boyfriend). And New Zealand is framed by the Mau as just the latest in a long line of opponents to Samoa, Johnny-come-latelys after Tonga, Germany and the US.
Much meaning is lost to a non-speaker of gagana Samoa, and parts of the English script are flawed, declamatory, expository and in need of an edit, but several scenes are full of lively banter. The mostly amateur cast does a respectable staging job.
