In 1895, an elder­ly, ill Mark Twain embarked on a world lec­ture tour, in order to earn enough mon­ey to pay back the $100,000 debt he held. The tour took him down under, includ­ing a vis­it to Whanganui. And it’s this event that Mark Twain and Me in Mao­ri­land takes its inspi­ra­tion from.

After its pre­miere at the New Zealand Fes­ti­val of the Arts ear­li­er this year, the play returns for a short run at Down­stage.

The play sup­pos­es that Mr Twain took a rather more active role in local pol­i­tics, inflam­ming the Pake­ha, and both pro-Euro­pean and anti-Euro­pean Maori alike.

But this is no staid his­toric dra­ma. The play has lash­ings of te reo Maori — some­times trans­lat­ed, oth­er times not, but you’re clever so you can fig­ure it out from the con­text. And there’s a pleas­ing amount of song and music, with Mr Twain strap­ping on an elec­tric gui­tar at one point, to join in on a blues num­ber.

Play­wright David Geary’s inno­v­a­tive script has moments of high com­e­dy, yet with the pow­er to get right down into some real­ly grit­ty emo­tion­al moments. But what I real­ly enjoyed the most was how New Zealand this play is. I’m sure all the places Twain vis­it­ed on his 1895 tour have their own sto­ries to tell (or make up), but it’s just real­ly sat­is­fy­ing to see an inven­tive, enter­tain­ing play like this that’s come out of New Zealand.