The Decem­ber Broth­er is the newest pro­duc­tion from the SEEyD The­atre Com­pa­ny. It com­pris­es of three mini plays, all linked with the com­mon form of fam­i­ly and the search for truth.

Part one tells the true sto­ry of Tony Spite, a mid­dle-aged man who is reunit­ed with his birth moth­er in the mid-1990s.

It feels like a comedic episode of “Who Do You Think You Are” with a fam­i­ly tree that’s so over­grown it needs to be illus­trat­ed with a graph­ic.

Tony’s real-life son Tim Spite plays his father and cap­tures the ten­sion, inse­cu­ri­ty, joy and love involved in the reunion. It feels like well-worn fam­i­ly sto­ry that has been cheer­ful­ly told many times before. And I’m sure it’s a sto­ry that many oth­er peo­ple will recog­nise.

The sec­ond part of the play also takes place in the mid-’90s and looks at anoth­er New Zealand fam­i­ly — the Bain fam­i­ly of Every Street, Dunedin.

The audi­ence is wit­ness to two recre­ations of the Bain fam­i­ly mur­ders. First with David Bain as the killer, sec­ond­ly with Robin Bain.

The stage is marked out with the house­’s floor­plan, and the mur­ders are large­ly enact­ed through mime, but with vital sound effects and light­ing.

The qui­et per­for­mance meant that the street out­side pro­vid­ed a curi­ous sound­track of its own, with police sirens wail­ing from Cam­bridge Ter­race.

Final­ly, part three is a fic­tion­al piece that mash­es up of the ideas in the first two parts. It tells the sto­ry of a woman who, at age 35, dis­cov­ers she’s adopt­ed, but is then shocked to find that her birth par­ents were mur­dered by her broth­er.

She reluc­tant­ly pays a vis­it to her new­ly dis­cov­ered broth­er in prison, as he’s the only remain­ing con­nec­tion she has to her birth moth­er. It seems the more she uncov­ers about her birth fam­i­ly, the worse things get, but she just can’t stop dig­ging.

The actors — Brad McCormick, Tim Spite, Nik­ki Mac­Don­nell and Hadleigh Walk­er — han­dle the many dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters with ease, mov­ing from slap­stick to very emo­tion­al scenes with­out stum­bling.

I enjoyed The Decem­ber Broth­er, with all its highs and lows. It’s three slices of New Zealand that we might not nec­es­sar­i­ly like to think about much, even though they are part of our cul­ture.

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Of note, the play start­ed with an on-stage ad com­mis­sioned by the NZ Trans­port Agency to pro­mote safe dri­ving. It kind of dis­rupt­ed the audi­ence’s focus at the start of the play, and made an already long night even longer. That said, I think I like this idea of a live action ad.

Mean­while, there’s some­thing not quite right about the seat­ing lay­out at Down­stage. It seems to be a bit too tight­ly arranged, result­ing in lit­tle leg room for audi­ences. As well as dis­com­fort, this led to the unex­pect­ed side effect of the sound of break­ing glass­es through­out the play, as rest­less legs struck for­got­ten wine glass­es.