Mag­gie Flynn is bur­ied and under the earth at Kororāreka. She’s dead but a thing like that isn’t going to stop her from telling us her tale in the hopes that her memory at least will last a little longer. Through dead hus­bands and lov­ers, from the cap­tain of a ship of men to the cap­tain of a dif­fer­ent kind of ship for men, from Eng­land to Kororāreka we hear her bal­lad.

Writ­ten by Paolo Rotondo and dir­ec­ted by Julie Nolan, acted by Vic­tor­ia Abbott, Alis­on Bruce, Amber Cur­reen, Kat­rina George and Hiner­on­gonui Kingi. Each act­or plays mul­tiple roles. We start with Abbott play­ing the young­er Mag­gie and Bruce play­ing her dead hus­band Cap­tain Riley. Mag­gie is an uncom­prom­ising char­ac­ter who will do whatever it takes to sur­vive. Abbott is par­tic­u­larly good at por­tray­ing Maggie’s unflinch­ing stand for her­self while let­ting some of her fear and uncer­tainty show through. Bruce is hil­ari­ous as (also dead) Cap­tain Riley pop­ping up at inter­vals to express his undy­ing love for Mag­gie. The rest of the cast are a chor­us of ship’s crew help­ing to tell the story through nar­ra­tion, song, and inter­ac­tion. When the action reaches Kororāreka Maggie’s dreams come crash­ing down as the ariki, Mata, (Kingi) lets her know the real­ity of the situ­ation. Kingi is sober and con­trolled yet with some vul­ner­ab­il­ity that gives Mata a real­ness. Cur­reen is fierce and humour­less as his sis­ter Ngā and it’s neat to see the char­ac­ter soften a little as the situ­ation changes. Dur­ing this sec­tion Bruce and George take up the nar­ra­tion as two clown­ing chil­dren and they are delight­fully silly and cheeky. Things pro­gress and in the next sec­tion Bruce is the older Mag­gie. All the soft­ness has leached out of her through trouble­some years and it’s a bit dis­con­cert­ing to see Bruce who was so charm­ing in the pre­vi­ous sec­tion become so hard.

The bal­lad rolls from intensely focused scenes to broad com­edy with the act­ors spin­ning from ser­i­ous to humor­ous. There’s clev­er use of black box shapes stacked on top of each oth­er to cre­ate dif­fer­ent set­tings. They give the found­a­tion for some of the strik­ing images on stage but for me it’s miss­ing the mind-blow­ing design factor that Red Leap shows often have. It’s refresh­ing to see an all female cast, with mul­tiple strong female char­ac­ters and to watch a show that’s not afraid to mix the real and unreal as a mat­ter of course.