Bicultural opera requires verve to keep audience alert

If a piece of theatre is truly transporting, you could be watching it while sitting on a cactus and never notice.

Footprints/Tapuwae at Free Theatre Christchurch’s new venue in the Arts Centre is an atmospheric and intriguing piece of work, but lacked the verve required to distract me from my small wooden seat.

The show is a bicultural opera combining elements of Richard Wagner’s ring cycle operas with waiata and haka performed by kapa haka groups Te Pao a Tahu and Te Ahikomau a Hamo Te Rangi.

Voices and the sinister whirr of a bullroarer, or a purerehua, emerge from the smoke-filled half light. Waiata are performed in dramatically lit spaces around the theatre, which then merge into pieces from Wagner’s opera performed by a pakeha choir and a small group of musicians.

The show is an impressionistic and experimental exploration of how European and Maori cultural traditions clashed in colonial New Zealand. The discovery of gold is the trigger for this clash.

Wagner is an appropriate choice for this tale of global conquest and mythical battle over powerful objects. The European myth making of Wagner’s operas meld well with the Maori myths and rituals displayed in waiata and haka.

There are moments of beautiful visual drama, some genuinely unsettling sequences and the show is definitely not short on mood. An elevated walkway takes advantage of the tall space at the Arts Centre and puts the cast above the audience. But, there are also moments where it lacks dynamism, energy and verve. The staging for some of the operatic moments feels a bit static. It could have done with some light and shade, moments of dramatic contrast from the overarching mood and some bursts of energy to keep the audience alert.

But, for all that, this is an intriguing and memorable show. It is an exciting time for the Free Theatre and I look forward to their future works in their new space.