Auckland Theatre Company’s mid-year season continues in remarkable fashion with Sons of Vao, an extraordinary new work from playwright Vela Manusaute. Surprising, humorous, deeply dramatic and intensely personal, this moving production explores family, immigration, identity, and the often-complicated bond between fathers and sons. It is a work filled with emotional honesty, and audiences will feel every beat of its powerful heart.
A Work of Deep Emotion and Empathy
As the first-ever production of a play by a Niuean playwright, Sons of Vao marks a significant cultural milestone. Drawing deeply from his own life, Manusaute reflects on his upbringing, his relationship with his father, and the experiences that shaped him into the man he is today. Now, at fifty years of age, he confronts those memories through the lens of theatre, transforming deeply personal experiences into a moving act of reflection, healing, and acceptance. The result is nothing short of remarkable.
The production is elevated further through the co-direction of Anapela Polata’ivao, whose extraordinary work on Tinā demonstrated her remarkable gift for balancing emotional intimacy with cinematic scale. That same empathy is present throughout Sons of Vao, as she and Manusaute carefully unpack themes of love, grief, inherited trauma, forgiveness, and the enduring hope that time can bring healing. Together, they have crafted a production that constantly surprises its audience through inventive staging, evocative lighting, expressive choreography, and music that naturally intertwines with the drama to create a rich theatrical tapestry.
A Cast of Exceptional Performances
At the centre of the production stands Beulah Koale as the imposing patriarch Vao. Koale delivers an astonishing transformation, embodying a man who has crowned himself king of his household and rules with unwavering authority. There is undeniable charisma beneath Vao’s hardened exterior, but it exists alongside explosive anger, emotional repression, and an inability to express love in the way his family desperately needs. Koale wisely avoids portraying Vao as either hero or villain. Instead, he simply inhabits the contradictions of a deeply flawed man, creating a performance that is nuanced, uncomfortable, and utterly compelling.
Opposite him, Haanz Fa’avae-Jackson, Epine Bob Savea, and Brett Taefu deliver beautifully balanced performances as Vao’s sons, each carrying the emotional scars left by their father’s presence in different ways.
Fa’avae-Jackson’s To is the dreamer of the family—creative, emotionally open, and perhaps the son most profoundly affected by his father’s actions. Bob Savea’s Seki lives firmly within Vao’s shadow, internalising his father’s stoicism and volatility, while Brett Taefu’s Sau provides the family’s unpredictable spark, reacting instinctively to the pressures surrounding him. Together, the trio share a wonderful chemistry that effortlessly shifts between moments of laugh-out-loud comedy and deeply affecting emotional drama.
A Moving Celebration of Storytelling
Sons of Vao is theatre at its most intimate and human. It creates a space for an artist to examine his own life with honesty and vulnerability while inviting audiences to reflect on their own relationships, their own families, and the ways in which love is expressed—or withheld—across generations.
Rich with emotion, cultural identity, humour, and compassion, this is a production that lingers long after the curtain falls.
Sons of Vao is now playing at Auckland Theatre Company until 5 July, and stands as one of the company’s most affecting productions of the year.
