Kororāreka The Ballad of Maggie Flynn

This is a story unique to us as New Zealanders, unravelling the legacy of the women in our past and stirring the ones too wild to be captured. It is a sea-shanty, a coarse and vulgar rhyme that will make you laugh and cry to smell the sea again after so long.

Set in the era of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Kororāreka (Russell) was a lawless outpost in a wild country.

Maggie Flynn leaves Ireland a convict and arrives in Kororāreka the captain of a whaling ship. When burying her husband on the shores of this land she is captured by a Māori chief and becomes his mōkai, a prestige slave more akin to a pet. An unthinkable intimacy burns between her and the chief until her fateful rescue where she loses all she has held dear. Her fortune continues to twist and turn as Maggie becomes a force facilitating the burgeoning trade between Māori and European settlers, the publican and madam of the notorious Duke of Marlborough Hotel. One day culture and history collide and her ultimate undoing is the very world she sought to escape.

Kororāreka – The Ballad of Maggie Flynn toured the North Island in August and September 2018.

"A rollicking yarn, with real heart and a charismatic heroine" Janet McAllister, NZ Herald

"Like an adventure book you cannot put down for fear of coming back to your bland reality" Rachael Longshaw-Park, Theatrescenes

"A vividly empowering production that challenges us to think about our colonial history" Jorja Heta, Tearaway

"Director Julie Nolan has a sharp eye for that sense of a frozen waterfall – the crystalline moment of first encounter with an image" Kate Prior, Pantograph Punch