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.