The Prophet at Maidment Theatre

By FRANCIS TILL

Hone Kouka's The Prophet is the third element in a trilogy that catalogues the demise of a small East Coast town over 50 years. Audiences that have experienced the other legs in the trilogy will derive a richer experience from this play than those, like me, who have not. But the play works well on its own.

That said, it is no ordinary night at the theatre, and much of what goes on is entirely outside the box. Fortunately, most of it works. Taki Rua's attention to production detail yields a seamlessly rich visual experience and director Nina Nawalowalo layers the complex metaphors and physical demands of the text with the deftness of a master weaver.

At the centre of the play is a dead boy, Joshua, celebrated as a prophet for having once had a vision. His death is mysterious, perhaps the result of a suicide.

The unveiling of his headstone, a year after his death, brings four of his scattered, urban-dwelling friends back to the marae, and to the basketball court where generations of children have played while the town wilted around them.

There they find Aunty Kay (Tanea Heke), Jason's mother, and Maia (Miriama McDowell), who has an infant son by a long-gone father.

In a play that is sometimes marred by characters with a tendency to declaim, Heke's performance is lush and compelling. The wit of Aunty Kay moves the play forward through several difficult transitions and Heke's charisma brings the character fully to life.

The set, in which a basketball court achieves the iconic status of a grave, is a small masterpiece and greatly facilitates the more exotic elements in the production.

This is a story of diaspora and death, but it is also, sometimes awkwardly, a story of hope and love. Kouka is exploring the future of a people, as well as taking on the very personal story that informs the text, and he makes great use of culturally authentic markers and te reo.

That can exclude, but even from outside the view is exquisite and deeply challenging.