Paul Gittins is pretty steamed up. The evening before he was due to talk about Prima Facie, the play he’s preparing to stage in Auckland this month, he caught the TV news about Christchurch’s “Mama Hooch” court case.
The case, involving multiple rapes and sexual assaults, some committed eight years ago, is an extreme reflection of Prima Facie’s narrative: that the justice system is a cruel process for rape victims.
The drama, by Australian lawyer-turned-playwright Suzie Miller, is a one-hander about a high-achieving defence lawyer undercut by the system when she lays a complaint of rape against a male colleague. Prima Facie has become a global phenomenon, with productions scheduled across Europe, Scandinavia, the US, Asia and South America.
Gittins’ production will star Acushla-Tara Kupe (Ngāti Maniapoto), seen recently on TVNZ+ as police officer Diana Huia in the New Zealand-Irish crime series The Gone.
Circa Theatre in Wellington is also staging Prima Facie in a separate production, with Mel Dodge directed by Lyndee-Jane Rutherford, opening a couple of days after the Auckland season.
It’s clear the play has something to say that audiences want to hear, and Gittins is struck by the relevance of the Mama Hooch case to Prima Facie.
Named after the Christchurch bar where drinks were spiked by the victims’ predators, the case has finally led to the conviction of two men, Roberto Jaz, 38, and his brother Danny Jaz, 40, on 69 charges including rape, indecent assault, sexual violation and stupefying.
The men will be sentenced in August.
The cases involved about 30 women, but police believe there were more victims who never came forward. Moreover, the crimes occurred from 2015-18. That’s a long wait for the women.
“God, it’s unbelievable,” Gittins says. “The statistics are shocking. The Help website says for every 100 cases of sexual assault on women, only 10 will be reported to the police and of those 10 only three will go to court. And only one ends up getting a conviction. You can see why a lot of women decide not to lay a complaint.”
Gittins, who saw the National Theatre Live production at the Bridgeway Cinema in Auckland’s Northcote, says Prima Facie is a perfect choice for Plumb Theatre, the “little company” he set up in 2017.
“It fits the Plumb brand – it’s intimate, it’s engaging and it’s got strong content. It’s a huge role for the actor. We held extensive auditions and there were people I thought would handle it really well. Acushla-Tara has that something extra. She’s got that lovely combination of real intelligence and an emotional reservoir.”
She will need those in spades to fully inhabit Tessa Ensler, a working-class woman rising fast in a law firm dominated by highly privileged male colleagues.
“She’s become very successful as a criminal defence barrister, especially defending men on sexual assault charges,” says Gittins. “She understands it’s not a pleasant process for the complainant. Her job is to test the evidence and she believes wholeheartedly in the legal process. But then, of course, the tables turn.”
Gittins has assembled a stellar team for the production. Actor Miriama McDowell is the intimacy co-ordinator, with John Parker as set designer, Elizabeth Whiting on costumes, Jane Hakaraia in charge of lighting and Eve de Castro-Robinson creating the sound, an integral part of the play’s ambience.
“Back to Mama Hooch,” says Gittins. “The defence counsel were using much of what [University of Canterbury] law professor Elisabeth McDonald calls “rape methodology” to try to undermine the witnesses.
“Her position is that even though a 2015 Law Commission report led to changes in the way the legal system deals with sexual assaults, the complainant is going to be cross-examined and every detail of their life is going to be scrutinised.
“The play is pretty universal and the situation is worldwide.”
Prima Facie debuted in Sydney in 2019, and after a Covid hiatus, burst into international prominence in a West End season starring Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) in her stage debut at the Harold Pinter Theatre.
It has screened worldwide in a National Theatre Live production and in April this year, the London team transferred to Broadway, where its Manhattan run has been extended to July 2.
A Guardian writer noted that when she attended one of the Broadway shows, she sat next to a young woman who had seen the play twice in one week. “She started weeping loudly 30 minutes in and didn’t stop until the standing ovation.”
Both Comer and the play won Olivier Awards in the UK last year and she has been nominated for a Tony in the US, where the winners will be announced on June 11.
Opening-night nerves
Gittins has made a gradual shift from “a working actor, making a living” to director over the past 20 years. He still takes on some voiceover, film and TV jobs but has walked away from his great love, the stage, where he started out in Auckland’s Theatre Corporate in the mid-70s, working under director Raymond Hawthorne.
Gittins also worked seasons with the Mercury and Downstage theatres, and finally bowed out after playing Lenin in the 2002 Auckland Theatre Company production of Tom Stoppard’s comedy Travesties.
“I find the degree to which [the stage] takes over my life is too much. I have never been an actor who can roll up at the half-hour call and then toss off a performance like many actors I know.
“It’s always been an agonising process for me. Around lunchtime of every day, my thoughts would always start turning towards that evening’s show and that was the end of being able to do anything useful for the rest of the day.
“And terrible opening-night nerves were something I never conquered, something I never experience on film or TV. These days, I am happy to stand back and admire the bravura of the theatre people I cast in my plays.”
There was a time during the 1990s when a television role unexpectedly propelled him into stardom. When TV’s Shortland Street launched in 1992, Gittins, then 42, played the private clinic’s suave but “troubled” boss, Dr Michael McKenna, one of the original cast of 16. To this day, some people who don’t know the Gittins name recall “Dr McKenna” and his wild ways.
“I was used to being in stuff that had a beginning, a middle and an end,” he muses. “Suddenly I was confronted by storylines where I had no idea where I was going. I started off as head of the clinic and a bachelor.”
However, that version of Dr McKenna was too bland for the writers. Within the first year, the boss had become a wreck. He was suddenly a divorced alcoholic with two adult children including a gay son. His ex-wife, Alex, played by Liddy Holloway, who was one of the scriptwriters, also arrived, wanting to reunite the family. But then Alex had plastic surgery and fell into a coma – until she revived.
“I used to complain to Liddy that she was giving herself the best lines all the time,” recalls Gittins.
He quit Shortland Street after three years but was lured back for a protracted finale a few years later. “I didn’t really want to but they said, ‘If we kill you off, would you come back?’ So I said yes, that will put it all to bed, but in a way now I wish I hadn’t done that. It would be nice to go back and do a little bit. I could be the twin brother.”
But his acting cred post-Dr McKenna didn’t falter. Like many New Zealand thespians at the time, he worked briefly on Xena: Warrior Princess, playing Kaleipus the centaur in a couple of episodes in 1998.
The role is immortalised in a photo on such websites as fandom.com showing Gittins sporting flowing locks and an eye-patch, his upper body anchored snugly by the horse torso.
Gittins snorts with laughter when he sees it. “Oh dear. I was fitted into the body with blocks on my feet and I couldn’t walk. There was one scene when Lucy Lawless [Xena] jumped on the back of me and we ‘took off’, pretending we were moving.
“It was all smoke and mirrors, but it worked. When I saw it on screen I thought it was amazing!”
Better option
Gittins’ background gave no indication he was destined for such actorly greatness. He was born in a small village near Manchester in 1950 shortly before his “very poor” parents emigrated to Melbourne under the “10 pound Pom” scheme. “It wasn’t quite what it was cracked up to be … and the heat got to Mum.”
His parents decided to return to England when Paul was 10, by then with a younger sister, but they stopped en route in Auckland and thought New Zealand might be a better option.
His father, a fitter and turner, got a job at the Wairakei Power Station, and the family quickly settled in, with Paul and his sister bussing to school in Taupō.
“In Australia I was in the school plays and when we came to New Zealand I was in the high-school plays and I talked about wanting to be an actor,” he recalls. “But Mum said, ‘No. No.’ They worked hard all their lives and they got material security, so in many ways, they couldn’t understand why I would reject that.
“I lived in Wairakei until I came up to Auckland to university. Mum had brought a pamphlet home saying New Zealand needed optometrists so, being a dutiful son, I enrolled in an optometry degree and very quickly realised that I was doing chemistry labs with people I didn’t relate to.”
He switched degrees to a BA in psychology and politics, at a time – it was the late 60s – when the University of Auckland was full of “anti” activities led by such people as Tim Shadbolt. Those were the days of anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and Jumping Sundays in Albert Park, where hipsters were wild and free.
“I pushed theatre away, suppressed it, I guess,” he says. “I got caught up with the counterculture stuff and the political side of things.”
After finishing his degree, “I was like a straw blowing in the wind not knowing what I wanted to do.”
So he took off overseas for two years, driving around the US in a Ford Galaxy he bought for $200, before heading to Canada and Ireland. In London, where he packed meat, he followed the path of so many New Zealanders trapped in that cold town, ringing home: “Mum, can you lend me the fare back to New Zealand?”
Urge to act
Back in Auckland, Gittins worked as an Air New Zealand steward and paid back his mum, but his urge to act resurfaced. In 1975, he joined Theatre Corporate, where the team worked by day in the school education programme and by night in the theatre.
His time at Theatre Corporate also introduced him to writer and producer Philippa Boyens (who would later win an Oscar for her work on Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King screenplay). Gittins and Boyens had two children before their relationship ended. “Interestingly, our son Calum followed me into an acting career whereas our daughter Phoebe followed her mum into a writing one.” Still good friends, Gittins says, “Philippa has been very supportive of Plumb Theatre.”
Appearances at Downstage Theatre in Wellington saw Gittins have the privilege of being critiqued regularly by playwright and newspaper reviewer Bruce Mason.
No doubt he has many anecdotes about this golden period, but this one reveals how much courage is needed to work on stage: “Tony Taylor [the Downstage director] did this German epic called Big and Little [Gross und Klein] by the surrealist Botho Strauss, written in 1978,” he says. “It was a huge beast of a play – three hours, three parts, with two intervals and very avant-garde.
“It was beset with problems, but we threw ourselves into it. After opening night, Bruce Mason wrote that it was the worst piece of rubbish he had ever seen.
“The season went on and the Wellington theatre public seemed to agree. They didn’t come. Then Bruce Mason decided to come and see it again. There were about 25 people there and after the second interval, the only people left were Bruce, two punks and their pet rat.”
No wonder Gittins chose to direct. But it’s not that simple. “It is hard not to reflect on who you are when grappling with the myriad heightened emotions that a career full of different characters has put you through,” he says, “both as an actor and a director. Every time I direct a new play it becomes a learning experience.”
Prima facie: Herald Theatre, Auckland, June 21-July 2; Circa Theatre, Wellington, June 24-July 22.
Where to get help for sexual assault:
If it’s an emergency and you feel that you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
- Safe to Talk – 0800 044 334 or free text 4334 for help to do with sexual harm. Available 24/7 and staffed by trained counsellors. Webchat or email support@safetotalk.nz.
- The Harbour Online support and information for people affected by sexual abuse.
- Women’s Refuge 0800 733 843 (females only)
- Male Survivors Aotearoa - Helplines across NZ
