Whero’s New Net, by Albert Belz, is a play inspired by The New Net Goes Fish­ing, Witi Ihi­maer­a’s 1977 col­lec­tion of short sto­ries look­ing at the expe­ri­ences of rur­al Maori mov­ing to the cities.

This play takes the idea for­ward to the next gen­er­a­tion, look­ing at Whero (played by Bree Peters), a young Maori woman liv­ing in Lon­don and try­ing to make a break as a singer-song­writer. She’s rather good, but a lit­tle ner­vous and some­what over­shad­owed by Red, her con­fi­dent, glam­orous musi­cal part­ner.

Whero is sup­port­ed by her Irish man­ag­er and his boyfriend, also urban Maori. All is going well, when Whero meets a mys­te­ri­ous stranger — an East Coast Maori ful­la who has the diary of her deceased father.

And it’s there that things get inter­est­ing, with Whero hav­ing to deal with aspects of her fam­i­ly’s past, her present and the pres­sures of the future.

The Mas­sive The­atre Com­pa­ny pro­duc­tion tells a dra­mat­ic, emo­tion and fun­ny (the “haka les­son” scene is fast becom­ing leg­endary) sto­ry, told well through Sam Scot­t’s direc­tion and the ver­sa­tile set by Tra­cy Collins.

The play is full of songs — both quot­ed snip­pets of old pop tunes (I did­n’t expect to hear bloody Bros at Down­stage, that’s for sure) and orig­i­nal music by Tama Waipara.

Whero’s New Net reminds me of the idea that you can try run­ning away from your trou­bles, but some­times they’ll sneak into your suit­case and come along for the ride.

And while the sto­ry was set in Lon­don, I can see a bit of rel­e­vance for a town like Welling­ton that attracts more than its fair share of cul­tur­al migrants, and hav­ing to deal with their old trou­bles in a new city.

It’s a won­der­ful piece of new New Zealand the­atre.

Whero’s New Net plays at Down­stage until Sat­ur­day, August 29.