REVIEW: Not In Our Neighbourhood at the Fortune Theatre. Tuesday, September 13
By Helen Watson White
Last night's One News revealed our national figures for domestic-violence cases have reached 110,000 a year.
Not In Our Neighbourhood, a short, razor-sharp play touring the country, addresses the abuse issue with all the forces available in a theatre, while leaving the audience feeling they've also been entertained.
Written and directed by Jamie McCaskill, this ''staged documentary'' is much more moving than it sounds.
You can't be objective about women's experiences as abused wives, mothers and aunts when their stories are realised right before you on a set that could be any CYFS or MP's office, police station or living room.
The Fortune's stage is refigured in a novel, transverse design, not unlike a boxing ring, with an assortment of domestic lighting marking changes of location and mood.
The audience sits in two raised blocks facing each other, drawn into the action, which is at times so wild it threatens to spill out of the arena.
A full range of emotions - from humour to gross impatience, barely contained suffering to outright fury - is achieved by the acting of one woman, who carries most of the play with an electrifying performance.
Kali Kopae is simply extraordinary, playing a total of five female characters: film-maker Maisey, invited into Hauraki Women's Refuge to record stories of women who've been abused; house-manager Moira; and Sasha (23), Cat (51) and Teresa (57), three extremely different women who have - so far - survived specific acts or sustained pressure of violence at home.
Kopae kept surprising us as she used her whole body to define a personality, then switched roles, setting one against another in the combative to-and-fro conflict that is an everyday mode of being for too many.
The play runs until September 16.
