Waiora Te Ūkaipõ – The Homeland – ASB Waterfront Theatre: March 6, 2026 (13th Floor Theatre Review)
Waiora Te Ūkaipõ – The Homeland is a revival of a by now celebrated play, first performed to great acclaim in 1996. Since then it has travelled widely, and been taught in school curricula. I fear however that it was a 30-year old story back then, and is now being revived thirty years too late.
It’s not that the story is unimportant. Māori moving to cities after the Second World War has been dubbed the “Second Great Migration” – that’s the territory we’re in. The play tells that story of “dislocation,” says playwright and director Hone Kouka, of “a lost people.” A people who had to “immigrate within their own country,” with all the compromises every immigrant family has to make. A family, and it’s a Māori family this time, trying to keep themselves above the water.
Their tīpuna (ancestors) have come with them. Tied to their rohe they might tend to be, but tīpuna will also follow whakapapa. These ancestors – a Greek Chorus full of Furies –seem unhappy at the move, ready to take prisoners if they have to. They are no one’s guardian angels, demanding payment for the move.
The play’s title, translated, is “life-giving waters/homeland.” That proves to be a double-edged sword. Just as we have a Greek Chorus, we also have an Ophelia, drawn inexorably to those waters.
We’re not long into things before one has to wonder however if a revival of a once-powerful play was a mistake.
The beginning is haunting, powerful, dramatic, building; figures creeping, moving; primeval sounds suggesting cosmic powers at play (sound composition by Maarire Brunning-Kouka, waiata and haka by Hone Hurihanganui). It all builds up and then …. our characters simply stumble onto the stage carrying new scenery with them. No lighting, so are they just scene shifting? But they appear to be greeting each other, so maybe not? It’s a kind of disjointedness that plagues the whole performance, sudden switches from the powerful to the banal.
Did I say banal? I did. You could see the actors knew what they were doing, and for some moments were able to show that. But what played out on stage, outside the Greek Chorus, seemed too much like amateur dramatics. Was that what was wanted? I’m not sure, but it was coupled with some characterisation that tasted too much like cardboard.
Even the cliches are banal. We meet on a beach – the metaphor of the beach being a zone of contact across cultural boundaries – where colonial and Māori worlds first met. The colonial “guest” brings a gift of soap. Māori serve kai. The white liberal school teacher is a bumbling do-gooder. The pakeha boss a racist fool. The characters are unfortunately as wooden as the metaphors.
A hangi is laid. Beers are dunk. Family dramas a are played out (‘no-one listens to me’; ‘I only want to please my dad’; ‘I love my Nana’). Patronising tosh is spoken. A love story is told. Meanwhile, tīpuna are increasingly unhappy. And it’s only here that the play delivers real power: these elements unique to Aotearoa are compelling – with a kapa haka standoff as a climax! – but a million other plays have already told that family story. We don’t get the full uniqueness of Te Ao Māori.
Thirty years ago this may have passed muster. I suggest it’s a sign of how much theatre has grown since then that we should, and do, now demand more than this. (As one overheard audience member said, “we should have let all that go 30 years ago.”)
A play of its time now out of time.
Theatre Peter
Waiora Te Ūkaipō – The Homeland is on at the ASB Waterfront Theatre 6-22 March.
Tickets and info here at the Auckland Festival website
