Poster for Sunset Road showing a woman and a man wearing motocycle helmet, with a road in the backgroundLucia and Luka are twins, liv­ing in Rotorua. They can’t wait to turn 21 and leave town for a dif­fer­ent life. Their Mum and Dad brought them to New Zealand from the Cook Islands. Rotorua is their dif­fer­ent life. Mum and Dad have expec­ta­tions and dreams for their chil­dren. But as they get clos­er to a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in the twins’ life, the secret that they have been hold­ing all these years weighs more and more heav­i­ly on Dad. The secret has to be told.

This is a com­plex, lay­ered script which ref­er­ences fam­i­ly dynam­ics, ances­tors, myth, respon­si­bil­i­ties and expec­ta­tions. I felt I was only see­ing the sur­face, not real­ly under­stand­ing the under­ly­ing mean­ings yet aware they were there. The chore­og­ra­phy in the play (by Ta’i Paitai) sup­ports the script, overt­ly when required but also in a few beau­ti­ful­ly sub­tle move­ments which I feel high­light­ed rela­tion­ships between char­ac­ters. The dia­logue between the par­ents (Tina Cross and Rob Ringiao Lloyd) reflects a poet­ic way of speak­ing, Cook Islands Maori trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish. The ban­ter between the twins (Aro­ha White and Nathan Mudge) is more casu­al. Their phys­i­cal inter­ac­tion shows the inti­ma­cy of twins. The moment when the secret is revealed is shock­ing and real.

An intrigu­ing new work from Tawa­ta Pro­duc­tions.

Sun­set Road on at Cir­ca Two to 7 July 2012.