Show: Hohepa

I always judge a show, book, or movie on the impression it's made on me, and whether the impression remains strongly in my head in the following days.
This opera, part of the NZ Arts Festival, 2 days later still is, but I'm struggling for reasons why. I guess in the final analysis, art is in the eye of the beholder, and maybe I don't possess enough "art" boxes to adequately tag it.
The score was melodically bereft to my ear, despite some of NZ's best voices being in cast, Phillip Rhodes, Jonathan Lemalu, and Deborah Wai Kapohe, but this couldnt have been a reference surely, to polynesian song being more dirge than melody prior to european influence, or was it just matched to the seriousness of plot?
The set was just OK..., un-extravagant, but the film-over backdrop did work reasonably enough.
So then, you'd rely on plot to lift the game?
Well, compared to the history books, was accurate, but too belaboured in the first half, and too fast in the second, although the show's tempo got a welcome lift from the latter.
Under the 'all art is a political statement' criteria, this production reeked, but there is a nuance in the subject of the opera, Hohepa's imprisonment story, that deserves to be retold, around the unjustness and circumstance of the incarceration, and the care and concern of his old neighbours.
There were unexpected elements of humour, and I cant decide whether they were incongruous in the telling of a sad and serious story or not.
Certainly, with my maori upbringing, I was throughout uncomfortable with the publisation of a death and exhumation private to the family and tribal connections, and I guess all kia kaha to them for the bravery in permitting this story to be presented this way, but there again...., politics?
Frankly, even as a well-descended maori, I'm getting pretty annoyed at the continual reminder of past injustice and land theft.
Do all the packed-house cooing and ahhing grey-haired liberati expect that if push ever came to shove, they'll get to keep all their nice Khandallah homes in return for their sympatico, while all us despised farmers get booted off our farms in the Great Reparation?
Yeah right....
In conclusion, courageous, and obviously not without impact, or I wouldnt have written this. It made me think, but I'd struggle to say I was entertained.
Would I see it again?
Not for the $100 a good seat, and nor for the cheaper chance to perch in the uncomfortable, ill-view affording Gods in Wellie Opera House either.