The Decem­ber Broth­er is the new­est pro­duc­tion from the SEEyD Theatre Com­pany. It com­prises of three mini plays, all linked with the com­mon form of fam­ily and the search for truth.

Part one tells the true story of Tony Spite, a middle-aged man who is reunited with his birth moth­er in the mid-1990s.

It feels like a comed­ic epis­ode of “Who Do You Think You Are” with a fam­ily tree that’s so over­grown it needs to be illus­trated with a graph­ic.

Tony’s real-life son Tim Spite plays his fath­er and cap­tures the ten­sion, insec­ur­ity, joy and love involved in the reunion. It feels like well-worn fam­ily story that has been cheer­fully told many times before. And I’m sure it’s a story that many oth­er people will recog­nise.

The second part of the play also takes place in the mid-’90s and looks at anoth­er New Zea­l­and fam­ily – the Bain fam­ily of Every Street, Duned­in.

The audi­ence is wit­ness to two recre­ations of the Bain fam­ily murders. First with Dav­id Bain as the killer, secondly with Robin Bain.

The stage is marked out with the house­’s floor­plan, and the murders are largely enacted through mime, but with vital sound effects and light­ing.

The quiet per­form­ance meant that the street out­side provided a curi­ous soundtrack of its own, with police sirens wail­ing from Cam­bridge Ter­race.

Finally, part three is a fic­tion­al piece that mashes up of the ideas in the first two parts. It tells the story of a woman who, at age 35, dis­cov­ers she’s adop­ted, but is then shocked to find that her birth par­ents were murdered by her broth­er.

She reluct­antly pays a vis­it to her newly dis­covered broth­er in pris­on, as he’s the only remain­ing con­nec­tion she has to her birth moth­er. It seems the more she uncov­ers about her birth fam­ily, the worse things get, but she just can­’t stop dig­ging.

The act­ors – Brad McCormick, Tim Spite, Nikki Mac­Don­nell and Hadleigh Walk­er – handle the many dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters with ease, mov­ing from slap­stick to very emo­tion­al scenes without stum­bling.

I enjoyed The Decem­ber Broth­er, with all its highs and lows. It’s three slices of New Zea­l­and that we might not neces­sar­ily like to think about much, even though they are part of our cul­ture.

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Of note, the play star­ted with an on-stage ad com­mis­sioned by the NZ Trans­port Agency to pro­mote safe driv­ing. It kind of dis­rup­ted the audi­ence’s focus at the start of the play, and made an already long night even longer. That said, I think I like this idea of a live action ad.

Mean­while, there’s some­thing not quite right about the seat­ing lay­out at Down­stage. It seems to be a bit too tightly arranged, res­ult­ing in little leg room for audi­ences. As well as dis­com­fort, this led to the unex­pec­ted side effect of the sound of break­ing glasses through­out the play, as rest­less legs struck for­got­ten wine glasses.