Review: The End of the Golden Weather – engrossing, gentle storytelling that welcomes you to the new theatre

Erin Harrington reviews The End of the Golden Weather, written by Bruce Mason and in a company version by Raymond Hawthorne, directed by Lara Macgregor, at the Court Theatre, Saturday 3 May 2025.

The opening night of The End of the Golden Weather, the first production in The Court Theatre’s new purpose built central city theatre, is a significant occasion. Bruce Mason’s Depression-era coming-of-age play is a landmark work of storytelling that helped shape New Zealand theatre, first presented as a widely toured solo show and since developed into a film and an ensemble production. Set one idyllic summer in the 1930s, on Auckland’s North Shore in the fictional township of Te Parenga (in reality, Takapuna), 12-year-old Boy hoons around the beach with his siblings, swims, mucks around, explores, celebrates Christmas. It’s a summer of languid, stretched out days, adventures, and cool water. He also becomes slowly aware of the inequities of the adult world, and the complexities of human behaviour. He observes poverty, violence, inconsistency and petty cruelty, the end of summer marking the end of innocence.

Mason’s show, first performed in 1960, was a way for him to create a platform for himself at a time where there were few opportunities. His work also reflects on a particularly Pākehā history, mindful of around a century of British colonisation, in which the play’s characters are only recently ‘not British’. The play was very interested in New Zealand’s shifting sense of nationhood; the perceived ‘golden weather’ does not just refer to the protagonist’s own coming of age, but rather many cultural shifts. This ensemble format expands upon this focus. It also reflects on the play’s key status within the development of New Zealand theatre, and its focus – like many other notable works of New Zealand film, art, and literature – on children and childhood as a site of transition.

This programming looks to the theatre’s past, from its origins in 1971, to its long-term home in the Arts Centre, then its post-quake revival in the ‘leaky lifeboat’ of the Shed in Addington and through various successes and high-profile challenges. Anyone who has been following the Court’s journey to this point knows how much money, negotiation, graft, and support (including from council and government) it has taken to get this theatre built. You could go loud and hard with the first show, like the defiant, razzle dazzle production of Side by Side by Sondheim at the Shed in 2012, which showcased that space’s enormous stage and the company’s strengths in musical theatre. Director Lara Macgregor’s terrific production of The End of the Golden Weather goes the other way. It’s much more measured, taking advantage of the new theatre’s smaller stage and proscenium, and (like the old Arts Centre auditorium) its emphasis on intimacy and proximity. This is a gentle, observational and thoroughly engrossing work that carefully balances sweetness with melancholy. It’s not nostalgia for its own sake, but a way of considering the slow and confusing drift from childhood into adulthood through small moments.

The excellent ensemble is made up of people who reflect the company’s legacy, its present and its future. The ten performers have been variously involved with the Court through acting, writing, direction, improvisation, teaching, children’s theatre, youth company work, corporate entertainment, artistic leadership, and governance, some for many decades.

Sir Ian Mune, who directed the 1991 film adaptation, is captivating as our narrator, sometimes wandering the beach-side set, sometimes settling into a large armchair that’s been transplanted into the sand. His embrace of the script’s poetry is masterful, his storytelling compelling. James Kupa gives a restrained and sometimes very funny performance as Mune’s younger self. He exhibits depth and interiority. Relationships play out with subtlety. Boy’s sense of watchfulness sits against the narrator’s own complex, present-day responses to his memories. This is offset by the energy and physicality of those around them, especially Gregory Cooper’s limber, physical performance as a mentally challenged and poorly treated young man who believes himself to be the famous Argentine boxer Firpo. Boy is wary of Firpo, then curious, later obsessed with the young man’s dreams to compete in the Olympics – and what it might mean for his own sense of being a ‘made man’.

Mark Hadlow, Kathleen Burns, Anna McPhail, Sela Faletolu-Fasi, Alison Walls, Reylene Rose Hilaga and Court newcomer Nick Tipa round out the impeccably drawn cast of family members, visitors, and townspeople. It’s a real joy to see an ensemble perform with such care and cohesion. There is so much listening, so much quiet response. There are also many moments of small magic: Hadlow as a defiant police officer, choosing duty as he stands his ground against starving rioters; Burns in one of her best-ever performances as Boy’s gangly and silly but watchful 8-year-old-brother; Tipa flexing his guns as a Canadian boxer; the children staging a variety show for gin-drinking adults. This is a production that would reward multiple viewings, just to get a sense of the relationships, undercurrents, and small details.  

I’m very interested to see how the company starts adapting to this new auditorium space, which is quite different from that of the Shed – the development of its own kind of relationship. The action plays out on a gorgeous beachside set, in which a jetty draped with bunting tilts out across the sand, creating multiple levels and playing spaces. It is lit sympathetically and subtly as the days get shorter, the naturalistic design sometimes augmented by the magical and stylised appearance of stars above the water. The scoring similarly grounds us in a sense of time and place, guiding our movement from the present to the past without being too obtrusive. The colourful period costumes reflect the young characters’ own sense of joy and freedom, while ensuring that the ensemble’s many swift character changes are legible. Our proximity to the stage, especially for those up close, means we can find joy in small details, such as trays of Christmas treats. It’s a beautifully created world.     

 So much drama hinges on trauma, or crisis. This isn’t a problem at all, in itself, but a quiet work that lets you sit with carefully handled moments of grace feels a little like a balm in this present social and political moment. This premiere production is capital-N nice – a charming, thoughtful and beautifully-designed show, powered by the charged magic of intimate storytelling, that leaves you hovering on the cusp of something new and unknown. Anyone who gets there early, enjoys the bright and open multi-storyed foyer’s many spaces, then sits in the audience of this exceptional new theatre will look around, too, and think ‘isn’t it wonderful to have nice things’.

The End of the Golden Weather runs until 7 June 2025.