Strange Resting Places, The Pumphouse, Takapuna
It is not often you get to see a fully-grown Maori man parading around a stage pretending to be a chicken. Strange Resting Places, which runs from March 4 to 15, is a surprisingly funny play. Set in Italy, 1944, it is the wartime story of two soldiers whose survival depends on mutual co-operation. One Italian and the other Maori, they can barely communicate. With extremely clever usage of props and characters, the entire show consists of only three men – Paolo Rotondo, Rob Mokoraka and Maaka Pohatu. Between them, they are at various points animals, saints, young lovers and cautious soldiers. By slipping on a dress here or adding a hat there, they transform into imaginative characters whose interaction is hilarious. The play uses English, Maori and Italian, which would surely please a multicultural crowd. The stage is strewn with dusty sheets and ammo boxes, complete with crude signage indicating time and place. But how many plays have you attended where the actors personally wait on you before the show begins? Paolo Rotondo was keeping the audience amused by offering Italian coffee and chocolate pastries, which of course had to be rationed, one between two, because it was wartime. The sheer difference of the main characters was entertaining -one was a farm-raised Maori soldier with a love of food and a cheeky sense of humour, the other a passionate Italian man who loved to talk and express emotion. Wielding guitars as guns, pois as aeroplane propellers and an array of spontaneous songs, it is intriguingly funny to witness. At one point, Mokoraka plays a young Maori soldier, Hemaara, who is staying with an Italian family while fighting the war. Signora Fornari, played by Rotondo is the doting housewife who tucks Hemaara into bed. Taking a blanket from a box to lay over the young soldier, she does so with the motherly instinct that doesn’t take no for an answer. Amusingly, as Signora Fornari pulls out blanket after blanket, Hemaara finds himself unable to say no, not wanting to seem ungrateful. Directed by Leo Gene Peters, Strange Resting Places is a rough and ready kind of play, with the reusage of props suited to the limited budget wartime era. This is worth a visit for the most entertaining history lesson you’ve ever had.