The Passionate Puritan
The Pumphouse, Tuam St, Christchurch
16/10/2025 - 18/10/2025
Production Details
Devised and directed by Peter Falkenberg
Free Theatre Christchurch
“Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
Free Theatre invites you to the heritage Pumphouse to meet Jane Mander. Jane died in 1949 but comes alive for our performance to tell us about her almost forgotten life and work in the early 20th century as a feminist, suffragette and novelist. Her best known novel is The Story of a New Zealand River, which inspired Jane Campion’s film The Piano and Michael Parekōwhai’s series of piano sculptures. As a self-confessed passionate puritan, Jane has some things to say about these works and about the passionless puritans of today.
Devised and directed by Peter Falkenberg, with design by Stuart-Lloyd-Harris, Jane Mander is performed by Marian McCurdy who is joined by Aaron Hāpuku and by Chris Reddington on the piano.
Performances:
Thursday 16th October 8.00pm
Friday 17th October 8.00pm
Saturday 18th October 8.00pm
The Pumphouse Bar is open from 7.30pm prior to the performance for ticket holders only.
Location: The Pumphouse, 544 Tuam St
Tickets: $20/$30 www.freetheatre.org.nz
Presented with the support of Pub Charity, NZCT and Christchurch City Council.
Contains themes suitable for a mature audience.
Performed by Marian McCurdy (Jane Mander), Aaron Hāpuku and Chris Reddington (piano).
Design by Stuart-Lloyd-Harris
Produced by Marian McCurdy
Theatre , Music ,
Approx 1 hour.
A riveting postcolonial drama unafraid to take risks
Review by Creon Upton 26th Oct 2025
First published in full on Flat City Field Notes
Every postcolonial people is unhappy in its own way, rent between a present no-one can correct and a past the settlers wouldn’t return to if they could.
One feature of the unease of the settler society in this country is its banal refusal to look back — more than, say, fifteen, twenty years — at least without the obfuscation of some bombastic alien romanticism that makes colonial New Zealand about as familiar as the swamps of Dagobah, and just as inviting. We are talking about The Piano, obviously.
This is why the most a tourist in Northland might be expected to learn of the great slaughter of kauri forests from the 19th and 20th centuries are some giant saws and fairly hideous gum souvenirs at the Kauri Museum at Matakohe. The sheer barbarism of both industries seems a little harder to grasp as a historical reality…(More)
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