This play dram­at­ises the real events of the 1912 Waihi gold­miners’ strike which star­ted in March and went through to Novem­ber.  It fol­lows the for­tunes of the strikers’ fam­il­ies and par­al­lels the struggle with the Suf­fra­gette move­ment in Eng­land.

Play­wright Lor­ae Parry focuses much of the script on the women in the strikers’ fam­il­ies. (There are some weird token ref­er­ences to Maori that I think should have been left out.) The didact­ic script in the first half is lightened by singing and dan­cing although my pref­er­ence is for the second half which is full of action. Dir­ect­or Kate Jason­Smith, cho­reo­graph­er Jan Bol­well, and fight cho­reo­graph­er Ricky Dey have done a ter­rif­ic job here. It’s chaot­ic, makes good use of the space, and is a great con­trast for the lev­ity in the first half. The play itself is com­plic­ated and sprawl­ing with act­ors doub­ling and trip­ling (or more). They cre­ate dis­tinct char­ac­ters helped by the cos­tumes (design­ers Pinky Agnew and Jocelyn Frances O’Kane with Sonia Costin assist­ing).

The cast are uni­formly ener­get­ic in this demand­ing ensemble play. My high­lights include: Lor­ae Parry as Jane Ashton, the banker’s quietly rad­ic­al wife; Car­mel McGlone as Annie Bur­gess the banker’s maid (very restrained with tiny facial expres­sions and subtle phys­ic­al move­ments speak­ing volumes); the sweet scenes between Iso­bel MacKin­non and James Gor­don (sweet­hearts Emma Beech and Thomas O’Connor respect­ively);  the stir­ring speech at the end by Emily Reg­tien as Kath­leen Beech, fol­lowed by a beau­ti­ful ver­sion of a song arranged by Laughton Pat­trick (#assump­tion) which I will not name because #spoil­er.

This is anoth­er play to add to the grow­ing num­ber of con­trib­uted-to-early-Labour shows. While this is a script that wants to edu­cate it suc­ceeds because it’s so damn enter­tain­ing. Mar­velous work.