“For many New Zealanders, the legacy of Crown Lynn is its domestic ware,” according to Wikipedia. “At the height of production in the 1960s and 1970s, millions of household items were produced every year, and most homes had at least a few pieces of this distinctive crockery.”

We’re in the Handle Room of the Crown Lynn Pottery factory in New Lynn, West Auckland – neatly evoked by Lucas Neal’s Spatial Design (I’m guessing the photo above was his inspiration). Playwright Poata Alvie McKree (Ngāti Kahu, Ngāpuhi ki Whangaroa, Yurumein, Barbados) has set The Handlers in 1976.

It’s a salutary, often funny and finally heartwarming story of wāhine-led manaakitanga at a time when Māori and Pasifika cultural values and tikanga were in danger of being diluted by the dominant version of Kiwi identity.

For more context:
Here is Wiki’s overview of 1976. Two years earlier, the Barry Barclay and Michael King six-part television series Tangata Whenua had, as noted by NZOnScreen Iwi Whitiāhua, screened “remarkably in primetime”. According to NZBC, the series had “possibly done more towards helping the European understand the Māori people, their traditions and way of life, than anything else previously shown on television.” But it wasn’t a miraculous moment of enlightenment for all. The Bastion Point occupation ran from January 1977 to May 1978 and was documented by Merata Mita and Leon Narby’s Bastion Point: Day 507 (1980). And in 1979, The Haka Party Incident happened.

Now, decades later, in a whole new century and millennium, malign political forces are attempting to take us backwards to the ignorance, intolerance and arrogance of widely discredited neo-liberal imperatives. So it’s timely for The Handlers to remind us that we’ve been there before and we don’t want to lose what we’ve gained as a society enriched by diversity and inclusion.

In what appears to be a happy and relaxed workplace, the handlers’ job is to glue the handles onto cups and mugs before they are glazed and fired in the kiln. It is Whero – perfectly pitched by Kali Kopae – who handles the handlers and all the issues that come up in the course of each day’s mahi.

She’s way ahead of her boss, John, benignly (until he isn’t) captured by Craig Geenty in his long socks, walk-shorts and toupee. He loves his Māori ‘girls’ because they bring their “natural rhythm and fingering ability” to their work, and he’s an inveterate punner.

Whero’s advice to the younger wāhine in her team is to forget the past and make the best of what this new life has to offer. She puts up with John calling her Vera on the basis that it’s best to ‘pick your fights’. And she’ll break the rules where necessary – the one about close whānau not being allowed to work on the same production line, for example. (Divide and rule, anyone?)

Te Ani Solomon brings us the lively, playful and sometimes stroppy Kiri. She is a creative problem solver by nature and we see that come to fruition, handle-wise. While Kiri is the most politically conscious, her sister Hine – intriguingly played by Waitahi Aniwaniwa McGee – seems influenced by the manners and aspirations modelled in women’s magazines. A framed photo in the tea room of Queen Elizabeth with Whero at Crown Lynn (the 1953-54 Royal visit), enthrals her.

Hine joins the team in her university holidays, much to Kiri’s displeasure given their sick father is bedridden at home. She has a secret that lies beneath the one they are all keeping from John.

There is a delicious irony in Salote from Tonga being so committed to assimilating into the team as a wāhine Māori – or is it that she just wants to play along with John’s misapprehension that she is Māori in order to stay out of trouble? In the role, Rosalind Tui’s giggling – as a coping mechanism – is wonderfully infectious, only to be powerfully counterpointed when a traumatic event befalls Salote’s family.

The Kia Mau Festival audience in Circa One is wonderfully responsive to the many relatable moments, including the hilariously painstaking business of dialling out on a rotary landline phone and the descriptions of Pākehā party food. As for Kiri’s riff on flipping the Anglicising of Māori names to Maorifying Pākehā names, those who have enrolled in kura reo can both laugh along and relate to that from the point of view of feeling honoured by it.

I do have some quibbles. I get no sense, either realistic or stylised, of the actual ‘handling’ mahi being done; they just scrape at imperfections in the clay. Also – correct me if I’m wrong on this – I don’t think university was called uni in Aotearoa New Zealand until we picked it up from Neighbours (first broadcast here in July 1988). And we would have written ‘arse’, not ‘ass’, in 1976.

But throughout the play our hearts and minds are with the characters as we discover more and more about them. We empathise with their dilemmas, align with the risks they take and share their responses to the outcomes.

Dramaturgically, the seeds are judiciously sown early on for the bursting forth of the dramas that the play is really about, and co-directors Sepelini Mua’au and Carrie Green orchestrate the physical and emotional transitions skilfully, as attested by the audience responses.

All is enhanced and supported by the team behind the on stage team: Costume Designer and Choreographer Jthan Morgan, Lighting Design Will Smith’s, Sound Designer Reon Te Aorangi Bell and Operator Michael Lyell O’Reilly – all enabled by Producers Trae Te Wiki and Sepelini Mua’au, Production Manager Jessie Rochford-Barber and Stage Manager Olivia Cowley.

The Handlers is a multi-layered taonga that stays with you and keeps revealing its values in the aftermath of its performance. It’s on until the 14^th of June.

Judging by the few shows I’ve seen so far, and the reviews Theatreview has published so far, the Kia Mau Festival is a triumph. Don’t miss the opportunities to engage with it.

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