To what extent are we complicit in our own exploitation? Who is to blame when it all goes wrong?

These are some of the questions Sam Brooks asks in his searing play, A Rich Man.

I don’t say ‘new play’ because Brooks wrote this play in 2017, but this is its first production. He says in the press release, “When I first wrote it, it felt like it was too soon, but I think the arts community is finally ready to have these conversations about exploitation, complicity, and what silence costs the most vulnerable people in our society.”

The venue is the dilapidated Old Folks’ Association Hall, beloved of many a past indie theatre show. Instead of the stage Brooks has chosen to use the back part of the hall, with its peeling wallpaper and the assorted retro furniture, junk and art providing an air of faded glory. Designer Jennifer Lal uses simple but effective lighting – angled desk lamps throw light onto the actors’ faces while a front row of white cans fill in the rest. There are no lighting changes – none is needed. A single speaker plays sound effects – a man coughing, recorded piano music.

We find our seats on the classic chairs to be found in this type of old community hall – wooden school benches, rescued chairs. From the front row, it feels like you are sitting right inside the study in which all the action of the play takes place. Four young men sit, oblivious to the audience and to each other. One is nursing a wine, crying; another is shuffling paperwork on a desk; a third is reading an autobiography of Dan Carter and the fourth is playing Nintendo. They are waiting in the downstairs study of the mansion of the titular rich man: waiting for him to die, but this isn’t the only closure they’re seeking.

A Rich Man is a pressure cooker of a play. Three actors are on stage the whole time – the others enter and leave, but it’s the audience who are captive. We are subject to the tightening tension, the swings of power and the weight of things unsaid – or said too much. Incoming cliche alert – we couldn’t look away from the wreckage.

Brooks has his characters converse in Pinteresque small talk that speaks more in the silences and the reactions. All six actors are brilliant in how they embody their characters, communicating more with their bodies than their tongues. Yes, this is a piece about sexual exploitation and power imbalance, but Brooks doesn’t have to rely on salacious details to shock the audience – it’s much more powerful if we are left to imagine it for ourselves.

The four young men at the centre of A Rich Man (played by Dan Cockerill, Max Crean, Mark Chayanat Whittet and Sean Rivera) are never named. This is in line with their role as interchangeable ‘furniture’ – obtained for the use of the house’s main occupant, swapped out every few years. When one attempts to introduce himself to the rich man’s daughter, Alicia (a steely Alice Pearce), she cuts him off – who he is doesn’t matter. Early laughs are gained as most of the men don’t seem terribly bright and are obsessed with drinking or gaming.  As the play goes on, our sympathies swing towards them as they reveal their fears and hidden depths, becoming distinct individuals as the long night wears on.

Comedy – the type that recognises the ridiculous things people say when they are trying to avoid saying the obvious – provides welcome moments of lightness. Sean Rivera deserves special mention for his dedicated depiction of a weeping puddle through most of the play, while Alice Pearce has my mad respect for never once breaking despite having the vast majority of the cringey lines delivered to her by other actors.

While this play is pure fiction, it’s hard to miss the parallels with recent high-profile cases where vulnerable people who must survive in an inequitable system face public and media judgement for apparent complicity in their exploitation. Brook’s play does a good job of exploring these grey areas, weighting the scales in different ways without prescribing what is and isn’t just. This isn’t a play where ‘justice’ is satisfyingly served. It does something more, asking us to think about the role our own perceived power and silence play when we see something immoral happening. A key moment for me was when the housekeeper Rose (Sheena Irving), who self-medicates on alcohol to cope with what she has to silently witness, is asked ‘why didn’t you try to stop what was happening?”. Her answer: “Would you have listened?”

A Rich Man is a rare thing in Auckland’s current theatre scene: a scripted work that has had enough time to develop. Sadly, the lack of funding to feed everything from grassroots up has led to a relative scarcity of original scripted works filling Aotearoa’s theatres at the moment. Brooks and his cast have created a work that is mature, thoughtful, engrossing and a delight to watch in terms of craft. Go catch it while you can.

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