I, George Nepia is a beau­ti­fully writ­ten, beau­ti­fully real­ised play. The script by Hone Kouka draws inspir­a­tion from many sources includ­ing Nepi­a’s auto­bi­o­graphy. You don’t have to have read the book to appre­ci­ate the play. (I’m not even sure you have to appre­ci­ate rugby.) The nar­rat­ive is about a man find­ing his place in a game that he hap­pens to be good at, then recon­cil­ing that with fam­ily life. (Some of Nepi­a’s whanau were there on open­ing night. It’s a mark of how much care has gone into the play that at one point someone cried out “That’s it! That’s exactly it!”)

The play is a scene flick back and forth between an older Nepia in a sort of super­nat­ur­al wait­ing space at the sta­di­um reflect­ing on his life, and a young Nepia embark­ing on the 1924 All Blacks tour of the Brit­ish Isles. (Dis­clos­ure here: Jar­od Rawiri who plays George Nepia (and all the oth­er char­ac­ters) is my sis­ter­’s tāne.) Ment­ors, teach­ers, and oth­er char­ac­ters fea­ture briefly to illu­min­ate dif­fer­ent aspects of Nepi­a’s pro­gress. Sol­id phys­ic­al work clearly defines each char­ac­ter. Dir­ect­or Jason Te Kare has worked care­fully on detail­ing each scene. The design team (Cara Louise Waret­ini, Miri­ama Ketu-McK­en­zie, Karnan Saba, Robert Larsen, Thomas Han­over) have kept the aes­thet­ic simple. The set is basic­ally a chair, a gui­tar. Pro­jec­ted line draw­ings rep­res­ent the flat ocean, seats in a sta­di­um, a church. Everything about the play comes across as subtle and nuanced. Surp­isingly for a play that is so mov­ing, it’s also very funny. Tumeke.

  • I, George Nepia on at Circa to 16 Septem­ber. (The play kicks-off at 2pm on the week­end and 6pm on week nights.)