Theatre
Mar 7 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

FROM THE moment a karanga welcomes audience members into the theatre, Battalion is a enchanting and emotional experience. It is a play that implores us to acknowledge the past and the atrocities our tupuna have endured, while successfully linking history with present issues and people. Battalion serves as a reminder of the power and healing theatre can evoke.

Strong writing from Helen Pierce Otene provides good pace and a captivating plot, complex enough to keep viewers intrigued until the end yet simple enough at times to inspire strong emotion.

The story is centered on the relationship between two urban-tough girls from Wellington and a kaumatua from a rural “one-cow” town. The girls have been sent to stay in the town to work on some behavioural problems, as members of a social group for at risk youths. At first they resent the kaumatua, Paola, and struggle against him, bored by his stories of war and the onerous tasks he sets them.

Paola has served in the 28th Maori battalion and, like all soldiers of war, has chilling, brutal and beautiful memories of it which are ever-present in his daily life. Unlike all soldiers of war however, many of his experiences were of mana and whanau; the Maori battalion was a unit of special solidarity and skill.

These memories manifest themselves as visions and dreams which engage Paola so entirely that at times he can not distinguish between his two realities – the past and the present. Strong and colourful, Paola’s visions soon captivate his young charges. They become intrigued and enthused by the stories of terror, fierce bonds and spirit that spin out of the kaumatua, and they begin to journey with him into the world of the Maori battalion, the war and the abhorrent sights and injustices the soldiers endured.

Paola’s grief from this time is still strong and as he struggles with it, the two girls, Georgia and Rimini, find they too have suppressed their tears. Rimini has endured a pain on par with Paola’s; together they seek to express it and to heal. The audience is taken from emotion to emotion as Paola and Rimini’s stories of bitter hurt and betrayal weave through the forging of friendship and through processes of opening and letting go.

The healing that is thus evoked on stage is made all the more real by the knowledge that the stories are true – Paola’s is an account based on actual events; Rimini’s painful revelations come directly from the lives of her fellow actors and actresses. This is the beauty and magic of Te Rakau – as a theatre company comprised of young people from varied, difficult backgrounds, many of whom who’ve faced multiple adversities – its works operate on many levels. It serves not only to entertain, but also to educate and to act as a forum for discussion, and so too a catalyst for social change.

Battalion brings to light once again a vital element of our past New Zealanders are already beginning to forget. It reminds us of the huge sacrifices made for us to live as peacefully as we now do. Rather than serve as a mere history lesson however, Battalion has the added depth of linking these past struggles to present ones, via the thread of pain. In this way Te Rakau has brought us a profound work that is educational, touching and above all inspirational.

» Battalion @ NZ International Arts Festival