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.