Review: Taki Rua's Sing to Me tries too hard to be too many things

There is so much about Sing to Me that is brilliant, but there is also so much that is not. Photo / Phillip Merry

Taki Rua presents Sing to Me
Written by Alex Lodge
Directed by Miriama McDowell
Wallace Development Company Theatre
Wednesday, May 19
Reviewed by Damian Thorne

How does change begin? The question is posed at the start of Taki Rua's latest offering Sing to Me. I was more faced with the question: How does this review begin?

If I go the positive route Sing to Me is an epic production about falling in love; cross cultural relationships; children of mixed race; suicide; cultural difference and climate change.

The flip of that coin is that Sing to Me is an overblown do-gooder of a production which tries far too hard to be far too many things. It's an actual quandary for me because there is so much about tonight's show that is brilliant, but there is also so much about Sing to Me that is not.

The most important thing I must stipulate is that the cast of three, Emma Katene, Rutene Spooner and Te Aihe Butler, are all incredible. Their work with the material they have been given is very easy to watch, at times incredibly intimate, and always well crafted.

The three run a gambit of emotion, sing beautifully, and Butler's musician character is the perfect narrator, pulling the at times incoherent material together and keeping things very much grounded.

The love story between Katene's sea woman and Spooner's optometrist land dweller is totally believable, the pair have chemistry which allowed me to switch off the content in places and enjoy their working partnership.

Where things veer toward melodrama in places the couple manage paired-back performances, including smart, economic choreography and movement, the level of which I've seen famous stage actors fail at.

The actors are let down by the most bizarre sound design I've experienced perhaps ever. There seem to be microphones everywhere, static mikes, handheld mikes, and body mikes seem to fire up during the musical or effect sequences, but alas when there is dialogue, the actors are left to project with no microphone backing.

This is a huge problem in a room the size of the Wallace Development Company Theatre, so much of the script goes missing, made even worse when the actors are directed to face away from the audience and deliver lines to the psyche wall.

I believe there is so much good in Sing to Me, but it needs to be seriously workshopped with themes removed. The play needs to be focused and the writer Alex Lodge needs to decide who he is writing to and who he is writing for.

This is a play by New Zealand's foremost Māori theatre company but not one word of te reo is uttered. If you study the programme there is much written about bringing up Māori kids. As the Pākehā father of a Māori child I just don't understand the rhetoric, it didn't need to be added to an already message-too-heavy play that runs far too long at two hours and 15 minutes.

+ Sing to Me is on again tonight, Thursday, May 20, at 7.30pm.