Te Kaupoi, BATS Theatre, Reviewed by Lynn Freeman.

THIS production feels like a flashback to the best years of Taki Rua, when we were regularly treated to gutsy, meaningful and unashamedly political Maori plays.
Whiti Hereaka integrates the recent so called NZ terror raids, the tendency towards rushing in legislation based on whipped up public panic and talk of abolishing the Maori parliamentary seats in a world set only slightly in the future.
Here Maori who don’t qualify for “status cards” may have their ancestral land back, but are starving. A resistance movement uses often-violent protest methods against the government while at the same time the mysterious Te Kaupoi, a prophet like figure uses radio broadcasts to gather his disenfranchised people to his cause.
Jason te Kare plays Te Kaupoi, brought up to be a prophet and beacon for Maori, as a man with tremendous charisma and emotional frailty, both in equal measure.
He is tired of hiding and being starved of food and of company, having only his staunch gun toting mother and the occasional rodeo meeting to ease the isolation.
The arrival of an injured young woman, Sarah, kicks up all kinds of other emotions for both the cowboy and his mother. All three must eventually make choices with far reaching consequences.
It’s hard to believe that Kay Smith who plays the visitor/intruder Sarah, is just a few months out of Toi Whakaari.
This is an assured performance, and the chemistry with te Kare is blistering. Tina Cook as Te Kaupoi’s controlling mother Mere hits the right note as nurturer and jailer.
Hereaka’s writing is so taut and the performances so intense that the 90 minutes running time flies by.
Other writers would need twice as long to pack in half as much content and feeling. Nancy Brunning’s direction is pitch perfect, getting the maximum from her cast of three and the tiny Bats stage.