Kali Kopae and Jamie McCaskill in 'He reo aroha'Do Tawa­ta have a hot-line to beau­ti­ful? This is the sec­ond pro­duc­tion I’ve seen from them in as many weeks that has opened my heart and lift­ed my mood. He reo aro­ha has been around for a few years now, tour­ing New Zealand and the world. It keeps to a min­i­mal aes­thet­ic — a cou­ple of chairs, some gui­tar stands and cas­es. The focus is all on the per­form­ers Kali Kopae and Jamie McCaskill. They are won­der­ful to watch and lis­ten to.

The sto­ry is that Kaia (Kopae) and Pas­coe (McCaskill) grew up togeth­er in the tiny town of Ti Kapa. They fall in love but Kaia, want­i­ng to make a liv­ing as a singer, leaves Ti Kapa and Pas­coe for the bright lights of New York.  Pas­coe, heart­bro­ken, throws him­self into his work, even­tu­al­ly sav­ing enough mon­ey to buy a fish­ing boat. After two and a half years they are reunited…or are they?

Songs are thread­ed through the pro­duc­tion, as per­for­mance, incan­ta­tion, lament, and cel­e­bra­tion. Kopae and McCaskill play mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters. (They also sing as dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters.) Both estab­lish a rela­tion­ship with the audi­ence that has us in fits of laugh­ter one sec­ond and close to tears the next.

A note:  The fan­zone is pret­ty close to the the­atre so you may have to close your ears to what is going on out­side. With such engag­ing per­for­mances it’s easy.