Power, politics and an ailing Samoan matai who may (or may not) be crazy collide in a new bilingual play, O le Pepelo. Joanna Wane asks what it’s all about.

At least Logan Roy had
three children to choose from (four, if you count Connor, which no one ever did). Pili Sa Tauileva has only two.

Manhattan’s glass skyscrapers may be a world away from a Samoan chicken farm, but the media magnate from Succession and the embattled village chief in O le Pepelo, le Gaoi, ma le Pala’ai (The Liar, the Thief and the Coward) have more in common than you might think.

The time has come for both these ageing lions to pass on control of their empire to the next generation. Unfortunately, their kids just aren’t up to it. And while the two family patriarchs are deeply pained by this, there’s also a certain manipulative pleasure to be had in keeping everyone guessing. “You’re not going to live forever,” says Pili’s exasperated wife, Fa’asoa. “If you cark it tomorrow, who’s going to lead?”

Wellington-based director and playwright Natano Keni hadn’t watched Succession when he wrote O le Pepelo with his longtime collaborator and partner Sarito So, but the overlapping themes will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s seen the much-heralded TV show. A dominant male refusing to relinquish his power. The tension between cleaving to tradition and adapting to survive. Self-interest and ego pitted against the collective good — although in Succession, it’s not the people who matter but the financial interests of the shareholders.

There are also shades of King Lear in the play, with a village idiot (or “vale”) played by Auckland actor Jesme Fa’auuga stepping in for Shakespeare’s fool. Keni, whose parents are Samoan, is good-humoured about this line of conversation but clearly considers it somewhat reductive.

“I see Pili as Pili,” he says simply. “These are our characters — they haven’t been discovered yet. I love texts like Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams but I always wanted to see something epic that was from here, merging all that to create something where our peeps are playing those characters from within the Pacific.”

Fair enough. So I refrain from making a Godfather reference to the Samoan mafia when I discover Keni has history with Semu Filipo, the actor who plays Pili. Filipo was a year ahead of him at Toi Whakaari (New Zealand Drama School) and played a retired boxer in Keni’s directorial debut, Riverside Kings, in 2017.

Described as darkly comic, O le Pepelo sweeps from almost slapstick humour to moments of real pathos as Pili confronts mortality, surrounded by his bickering family and the bureaucratic pettiness of village politics. Both his son, Matagi, who’s immersed himself in the way of fa’a Samoa, and his daughter Vailoloto, who was sent to New Zealand as a teenager, see themselves as contenders for his title. Caught up in their rivalry, they fail to see a far more serious threat emerging.

The play, a bilingual mix of English and Samoan, touches on some controversial issues, including the exploitation of Pacific workers brought to New Zealand through the RSE scheme, the influence of Samoans who have emigrated on local affairs, and the questionable proliferation of matai (chiefly) titles. There’s also a real Upstairs Downstairs vibe to the setting that delineates the hierarchy of power, with Pili refusing to emerge from his room on the top floor. It’s no coincidence that’s the only part of the ramshackle fale with reliable Wi-Fi.

A New Zealand-born Samoan, Filipo sees elements of his childhood in the “hard love” shown by Pili, who doesn’t reveal his emotions or openly express the love he feels for his children. The intergenerational gulf at the heart of O le Pepelo has also created rifts within his wider family.

“How we grew up fa’a Samoa is a little different to how our kids are,” he says, and this is the dilemma Pili grapples with in the play. “How do we balance tradition with modern society to move forward together? Can we do it hand in hand, or do we jeopardise one side for the other? Pili is raising these questions for everyone.”

Gifted one of the longest deathbed scenes in theatre history, Pili is a wily old coot with his own agenda. As the story unfolds, it’s unclear whether he’s truly touched by madness or if his sometimes bizarre behaviour conceals a more strategic game.

“This is my De Niro!” says Filipo, who co-starred in Taika Waititi’s 2023 film Next Goal Wins, about the infamously terrible American Samoa football team. But which De Niro, I ask — Jake LaMotta from Raging Bull or the curmudgeonly dad in Meet the Fockers? “That’s the beauty of it. Which one do I play? I’ve never been offered a role like this one where I can really stretch my craft as an actor. There’s a great element of absurdity to Pili that I love. Sometimes he’ll cut off his nose to spite his face because he’s the man and people listen to him. But at what cost? Is he willing to risk losing it all because of his pride?”

Keni, Filipi and Ana Corbett, who plays Pili’s daughter, Vailoloto, have gathered for this interview and photo shoot at Tala, a new restaurant in Parnell where chef Henry Onesemo has created a contemporary take on traditional Samoan cuisine. It’s an appropriate setting, given the play’s exploration of tautua (service), which is a central tenet of Pasifika family life. One of the rituals woven into the dining experience is the use of an apa fafano (hand-washing bowl) as a sign of respect, with blood orange essential oil sprinkled into the warm water. “If you’re intimidated by kina,” one of the wait staff tells us, laying down a selection of bite-sized morsels, “it just tastes like the sea.”

Corbett, who was born in Auckland to a Tongan mother and Palagi father, says her character represents the diaspora from the Islands. Vai is more worldly than her brother, who lacks Pili’s commanding presence, but being sent away to New Zealand has also made her an outsider. “He’s useless!” she says, of Matagi (played by Haanz Fa’avae-Jackson). “He tries hard to impress his father by studying the Tusi o Fa’alupega’ [a book of chiefly titles], but he doesn’t have a backbone.” Vai, she thinks, is more like Pili. “But it’s tricky because she doesn’t feel Samoan enough. And it’s been a challenge for women for a long time, seeing inadequate men rise to a position beyond their merit.”

What neither sibling realises, reckons Filipo, is that the real power lies in working together. “That’s what Pili thinks, ‘if you guys could actually get out of each other’s way’.” Still, he sees Pili as a man of his time when it comes to gender roles. “If they partnered up, my son would be the voice. Or as my mum would say, ‘Your dad is the head of the family, but I’m the neck and I can move the head where it needs to go.’”’

Filipo, whose father died when he was 15, is looking forward to his two children seeing the play. One of nine siblings, he’ll become a grandfather in a few months and shared a special moment with his daughter when they had their traditional tatau (tattoos) done together — the pe’a for Filipo and the malu for his daughter.

His younger teenage son, who’s Samoan, Māori and Tokelauan, is still grappling with his cultural identity. That’s a conversation Corbett has had as co-founder of the Upu Collective and one of seven performers in the Pacific poetry theatre show, UPU, which toured last year. “Is it a First Nation work? We’re New Zealand-born Polynesians, but we’re not indigenous to New Zealand and we’re also not indigenous [to the Pacific Islands].”

Corbett was pregnant with her second child when Keni and So invited her to do an early reading of O le Pepelo with them, although she wasn’t available for its brief opening run at Wellington’s Circa Theatre last year as part of the Kia Mau festival (with Filipo in the main role). Keni was born in New Zealand, too, but Samoan was the only language spoken at home — “the biggest gift ever” — and he spent three years living in the Islands from age 8.

Inevitably, elements of his family dynamics worked their way into the script. “I was in Samoa recently,” he says. “My mum is 80 now and her brothers, there’s six of them, are all in their 70s and man, they just revert back! It’s like, are you guys 13 or 14?” Corbett can relate. “My mum and her sisters still fight, eh? But that’s the whole thing about siblings, they know how to push your buttons and rark you up, but there’s unconditional love.”

Keni and So have moved to Auckland temporarily with their 2-year-old for O le Pepelo’s Auckland Arts Festival season and Keni’s presence at rehearsals as both director and co-writer has fostered a strongly collaborative relationship with the cast. He’s worked creatively with So, who’s Cambodian, for the past decade and the pair founded their theatre company, I Ken So Productions, in 2017. Keni says they share a commonality of beliefs, from concern over the loss of old rituals to a love of their native language. “She’s sensitive to fa’a Samoa and I’m sensitive to fa’a Cambodia as well. Finding that connection between different cultures is one of the major things that helps drive our making.”

Joanna Wane is an award-winning senior feature writer in the New Zealand Herald’s Lifestyle Premium team, with a special focus on social issues and the arts.