AK03: The Book of Fame

By GREG DIXON

Soccer, it's been famously observed, is the beautiful game. But rugby ... well, what is rugby?

As a game involving two sides of 15 enormous anthropoids engaged in a bruising contest, a drama of immovable objects meeting unstoppable forces, it surely deserves a rather more brutal adjective.

Barbaric? Perhaps. Unnatural? Possibly. Ferocious? Most definitely. But in New Zealand - arguably rugby's spiritual home, if not its birthplace - another word suggests itself too: identity.

For better or worse, the game can lay claim to having a deeper meaning for many New Zealanders than just a rugged, physical spectacle.

It is rugby's part in helping to forge New Zealand's sense of itself that is at the heart of possibly the best book written about the sport, The Book of Fame, Lloyd Jones' prose-poem about the historic All Black "Originals" tour of Britain in 1905.

The Originals' campaign marks the beginning of a classic New Zealand narrative. This first excursion to Britain by a New Zealand representative rugby side saw a bunch of country boys outplay all but one team of the Old Country's best (though the loss to Wales still stands as moot).

In the process they established a sporting brand which, nearly 100 years on, will put bums on seats in Australia at next month's Rugby World Cup.

The Originals tour is, in fact, on tour again. The Book of Fame's theatrical adaptation - the play of fame, as it were - finally comes to Auckland as part of the AK03 festival, after running in Wellington and Christchurch.

Adapted for the stage by Canterbury playwright and novelist Carl Nixon, the critically acclaimed play of the award-winning book is most certainly about identity.

It has also been described as a hymn to the national game, an assessment Nixon likes. "It's a hymn probably because the novel is lyrical, it's a poetic novel. It's almost an epic poem - but of course you don't market a book in New Zealand as an epic poem and expect it to sell."

The book and play use the tour as an allegory for the discovery of nationhood. As Billy Stead, the Original who is the play's narrator, reflects towards the end, "We who had come to discover, found ourselves discovered and, in that process, discovered ourselves."

And Nixon believes that discovery was that we were different.

"It's about the discovery of a pride in ourselves that maybe wasn't there as much beforehand. Then, New Zealanders saw themselves as being an offshoot of England. But in establishing ourselves as being better at something than the English, that generated national pride.

"Even now, to the average Kiwi in the street, rugby is quite fundamental. It makes you feel we're world leaders in something and that makes you feel good about yourself.

"I think rugby is an interesting metaphor for New Zealand and it works that way in the play and the book it's based on."

Nixon also sees common threads between the stories of the Originals and another nationhood-forming experience for a young New Zealand, the tragedy of Gallipoli.

"Lloyd could have written a similar novel about Kiwis going off to war. But the essential difference is that this is a triumphant story, though there's a war element to it as well because they lost people through sickness and injury."

The play is not one for the fans by one of the fans, however. Nixon played the game at school, but only at school. These days he watches just test matches and doesn't count himself an avid fan.

"The diehard theatre crowd think you have to know about rugby to see this play. But really it's about the personalities of the people on tour. Rugby was what they were there for, but it is character-based drama."

In the play, described by one critic as a brilliant display of ensemble acting at its debut at Wellington's Downstage in May, the score of characters in the book are divided between four actors in the play.

Nixon, an ex-teacher who has a background in theatresports, says it could not have been done any other way.

"Most of the plays that interest me use actors playing multiple characters. I think if I had come from a more traditional theatre background I would have had to ignore the novel because I would have had to have 27 people on stage, or at least a cast of 10 or 12.

"But coming from an improv background and writing plays [these include Kiwifruits and Crumpy] with actors playing multiple characters I thought, 'Great, I can have one central character and the others changing around him'. Instantly I could see how it would work.

"But I also like showing the conventions of theatre, saying to the audience, 'You're not at home watching television, you're here with a live person in front of you'. In a way that's being acknowledged by [the device of having actors play multiple characters]."

As befitting the subject, the cast - Jed Brophy, Peter Rutherford, Shannon Small and Eryn Wilson - have to work as a team to make the play work.

"The way it's been directed by Gary Henderson is fantastic. I wasn't really sure if a real ball should be used on stage because I thought there's a good chance they'll drop it, which is distracting.

"But he's got them really finely drilled so they do really amazing things with the ball and it's all beautifully choreographed."

Nixon is rather modest in accessing his own work. He points out that almost all the words are Jones'.

The author, however, played little part in the adapting. He gave his blessing to the play but made only a few suggestions by email during the writing phase.

"He wasn't precious about it at all. I was a bit nervous when he came to see it in the end because he'd been so hands-off I was thinking it all might be a bit of a shock for him. But he said he really liked it. He was actually very complimentary."

Nixon saw his job as being to structure it for the stage, which meant moving the novel's thematic form to a chronological one.

"From an early stage I was confident it would work. I thought, 'This will make a fantastic play'."

And possibly a film. The screen rights have already been sold.

But the natural next tour stop of the play of The Book of Fame - a season in Australia during the World Cup - isn't happening.

"The Sydney Opera House were interested in doing it but unfortunately Alone It Stands [a play about the 1978 All Black loss to the Irish club side Munster] is already playing during the World Cup. The feeling was that two rugby plays at the same time would probably be counterproductive."

The present All Blacks might not have appreciated it either. The Originals are, after all, a hard act to follow.

* St James Theatre, from tonight until Thursday

Herald Feature: Auckland Festival AK03

Auckland Festival website