Review: Cellfish

As part of the Kia Mau fes­ti­val this year I got to go and see the open­ing night of Taki Rua’s show Cell­fish, brought to Welling­ton after a sea­son in Auck­land last year.

Cell­fish is intense.

A two per­son show, fea­tur­ing Car­rie Green and Jason Te Kare, Cell­fish is set in a Shake­speare class at a men’s prison, but is far, far more than that. The per­form­ers man­i­fest the inmates of the prison, Shane, Foof, Irish, Mo and Tane, as well as their earnest war­den Ravi, through a series of char­ac­ter­is­tics. Green most­ly plays Miss Lucy, their Shake­speare teacher, who says that, “Shake­speare saved my life,” and assures the men that it can help them too.

Foof can’t read, but he’s will­ing to try hard enough. Shane and Lucy have past his­to­ry that nei­ther of them can com­plete­ly touch. Rav­i’s just doing his best to keep the men focussed on the lessons.

It is an emo­tive odyssey through Shane and Lucy’s pasts. An unseen pris­on­er, Big Nate, con­nects them togeth­er, and Lucy wants noth­ing more to sev­er that con­nec­tion as soon as she can.

Cell­fish is a sto­ry of lost aro­ha, lost lives, and peo­ple stuck in a sys­tem that does­n’t quite get them. With ref­er­ences to mod­ern media, as well as sto­ries past, Green and Te Kare pour their hearts out on the stage in a way that brought me to tears at points. Pow­er­ful, vibrant, and with an under­ly­ing thread of Tikan­ga Māori (played out most mem­o­rably in a vignette about Hine-nui-te-pō), this play is full of moments that real­ly hit you in the heart.

Cell­fish is on at the Han­nah Play­house from now until the 15th of June. Tick­ets avail­able here.