HBAF 2021 - The End of the Golden Weather

The End of the Golden Weather

[Due to Covid 19 level restrictions, the venue for this show has changed from Toitoi Opera House to St. Andrews Hall in Hastings. An additional performance has been added on Sunday October 31st at 7.30pm.]

“I invite you to join me, in a voyage into the past, to that territory of the heart we call childhood.”

Bruce Mason’s quintessential Kiwi classic chronicles the friendship between a 12-year-old boy and the wild-limbed Firpo. Through the boy’s eyes we see the wonder of life on a perfect beach, in a perfect 1930s New Zealand, during a perfect summer. It’s a world of magic and transformation, where anything can happen, and miracles seem possible.

Firpo is a social outcast who dreams of winning an Olympic medal. When the boy sets out to help Firpo make his dream a reality, ignoring his father’s rebukes and community ridicule, a battle rages between the eternal optimism of childhood and the harsh pragmatism of adulthood. Gliding effortlessly between flights of poetic fancy and blunt everyday speech, The End of the Golden Weather is New Zealand storytelling at its very best.

Bruce Mason was one of the most significant playwrights in Aotearoa’s theatrical history. Writing with courage and insight, he was a lover of language and a champion of the underdog. Between 1959 and 1978, Bruce toured the country, telling uniquely Kiwi stories about emerging identity, cultural cringe and social difference. From church halls to country shearing sheds to the Edinburgh Festival, Bruce would play anywhere to any audience.

2021 marks the centenary of his birth. To celebrate his extraordinary legacy, actor Stephen Lovatt is collaborating with director Shane Bosher and the Bruce Mason Estate to make his greatest solo works resound for a new age. Timeless. Universal. Distinct. This double-shot is a not-to-be-missed theatrical encounter with a master craftsman.