If you should happen to find yourself in the New Zealand capital next month with a couple of hours to spare and a few dollars to burn, you might want to check out a new play at Wellington’s Circa Theatre.
Transmission Beta comes billed as an “amusing, insightful, unexpected, moving Shakespearean tragedy told in three parts”. But it’s not a new rendering of Macbeth. It’s another creative celebration — there have been quite a few of late — of Jacinda Ardern.
The former prime minister may have abruptly stepped down from her role more than 15 months ago, but for the country’s arts sector it’s like the youngish premier with the pearly-gated smile never really left.
The playwright Stuart McKenzie describes his coming work — the second on its type he’s done about Ardern — as a “verbatim play”, based on interviews he did with her and others who led New Zealand’s Covid response.
In addition to Ardern (played by Sophie Hambleton), there’s former deputy prime minister Grant Robertson (Simon Leary), and epidemiologist Michael Baker (Nigel Collins), along with 11 others.
McKenzie is a respected local arts figure. Political criticism is not his strong suit, however, something that moved one otherwise sympathetic critic to fault his earlier work for offering “little resistance to some of the most self-congratulatory rhetoric” of the Ardern era.
In his defence, he recently told the news site Stuff that he is simply adding balance to the story of a prime minister who “really brought out the worst in a lot of people in their response to female leaders”.
If theatre isn’t to your taste and you’d rather see a local movie about Ardern, fear not. The biggest local documentary production in memory is also currently in process and it’s about you-know-who.
According to the $3.2 million documentary’s advance publicity, Mania celebrates Ardern’s leadership style while also taking a deeper look at the “online hate” that it says drove her from office.
That could be a bit of a hard sell. What Ardern’s creative supporters often describe as “online hate” often boiled down — give or take obviously fringe characters most often posting pseudonymously — to garden-variety political disagreements.
The film itself has been criticised in similar terms by those who question whether the $800,000 government grant received was justified. An additional $1.2 million in taxpayer money may also be coming its way, thanks to a production rebate scheme that Ardern’s own government introduced.
Few would dispute Ardern copped her share of criticism, but equally she enjoyed enormous media support during the six years she led the country with natural stagecraft. But by the time she got out of the game, her numbers had turned.
Serious crime was up in most categories. Core government revenue as a percentage of GDP had gone through the roof. Housing unaffordability — something Ardern campaigned heavily against in 2017 — had become ubiquitous.
Even on issues supposedly close to her party’s political heart, such as the environment, the figures were not reassuring: net human greenhouse gas emissions, for example, actually increased on her watch, as much so as the leader’s own favourability in public opinion polls had tanked.
Not that one would infer as much from the appearances of a slew of political books whose titles require little amplification: Jacinda Ardern: The Full Story of an Extraordinary Prime Minister, Taking the Lead: How Jacinda Ardern Wowed the World, and Jacinda Ardern: A New Kind of Leader.
Also on the shelves is a recent compendium of her aphorisms, I Know This to be True: Jacinda Ardern On Kindness, Empathy and Strength, which may or may not contain hidden profundity and excellence.
All of which may yet be small beer compared to Ardern’s coming book about “leadership”, or what the newbie author says in an Instagram post will turn on “the idea you can be your own kind of leader and still make a difference”.
And still pocket at least $1 million, the record advance said to be paid by Penguin Random House New Zealand for the work’s Australasian rights.
No doubt, the market, which has a way of sorting these things out in the end, will have the final word on whether that has been money well spent. In the meantime the Jacindamaniacs will continue to be spoiled for choice.
David Cohen is a Wellington author and journalist.
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