Poster for Sunset Road showing a woman and a man wearing motocycle helmet, with a road in the backgroundLucia and Luka are twins, liv­ing in Rotorua. They can­’t wait to turn 21 and leave town for a dif­fer­ent life. Their Mum and Dad brought them to New Zea­l­and from the Cook Islands. Rotorua is their dif­fer­ent life. Mum and Dad have expect­a­tions and dreams for their chil­dren. But as they get closer to a sig­ni­fic­ant mile­stone in the twins’ life, the secret that they have been hold­ing all these years weighs more and more heav­ily on Dad. The secret has to be told.

This is a com­plex, layered script which ref­er­ences fam­ily dynam­ics, ancest­ors, myth, respons­ib­il­it­ies and expect­a­tions. I felt I was only see­ing the sur­face, not really under­stand­ing the under­ly­ing mean­ings yet aware they were there. The cho­reo­graphy in the play (by Ta’i Paitai) sup­ports the script, overtly when required but also in a few beau­ti­fully subtle move­ments which I feel high­lighted rela­tion­ships between char­ac­ters. The dia­logue between the par­ents (Tina Cross and Rob Ringiao Lloyd) reflects a poet­ic way of speak­ing, Cook Islands Maori trans­lated into Eng­lish. The banter between the twins (Aroha White and Nath­an Mudge) is more cas­u­al. Their phys­ic­al inter­ac­tion shows the intim­acy of twins. The moment when the secret is revealed is shock­ing and real.

An intriguing new work from Tawata Pro­duc­tions.

Sun­set Road on at Circa Two to 7 July 2012.