Environmental musical sings cautionary song

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supplied photo The Last Tree of Rapa Nui tells tale of excess consumption.

There's a connection, oddly enough, between the TV music that Olaf Pyttlik writes as a composer-for-hire and his new stage musical for ages seven and up, The Last Tree of Rapa Nui.

If you've ever watched Til Debt Do Us Part, the reality series about couples who spend beyond their means, you'll know the theme song: "Money, money, money, money, money, money, money."

The German-born Pyttlik, 43, not only wrote the theme, that's his voice singing it. The co-owner of Da Capo Productions, a local audio production company, also composes background music for the similar series Princess, about materialistic women who don't know the difference between wants and needs.

Excessive over-consumption without thought for the consequences also happens to be central to The Last Tree of Rapa Nui, which has been touring the province and now lands at The Forks, with public performances at Manitoba Theatre for Young People Friday through Sunday.

Two years ago, Pyttlik (The Wave) got the idea from a Da Capo colleague to create a cautionary environmental musical about humans' deforestation of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). The long-ago loss of trees caused erosion, climate change, extinction of bird species, and is believed to have decimated the original population of the tiny, remote island in the Pacific.

Pyttlik views the island as a microcosm of what we're doing to the Earth. "We have limited resources on our planet, but we just want our stuff anyway . . . and we don't see the (ecological) destruction," he says.

He wrote the show's music and lyrics -- combining Polynesian and pop influences -- and enlisted playwright Vern Thiessen to pen the four-actor script. The pair previously collaborated on the 2008 musical Rich.

Rapa Nui is famous for its 887 moai, monumental human statues made of carved volcanic stone. They're believed, according to Wikipedia, to have been carved between AD 1100 and 1680.

Though there are many theories about what devastated the original Rapa Nui civilization, Pyttlik and Thiessen based their story mainly on the 2005 book Collapse, in which author Jared Diamond argues that the island society brought about its own ruin.

"The most widely accepted theory is that they cut down trees to roll these statues to the beaches, kind of like the Egyptians did with the pyramid material," Pyttlik says.

In the hour-long play, building monuments has become competitive. In a tribal version of keeping up with the Joneses, clans try to outdo each other with bigger statues, which require more and more lumber for transport.

The set includes three massive "stone" moai made of foam and cloth. The story is told from the point of view of two children, the daughter of the chief and the son of a stone carver, who try to warn the adults that they're using up the forests.

Pyttlik doesn't have children himself, but loves creating for young audiences. He has received a Canada Council grant to create a children's opera based on the true story of Francis, a freedom-loving pig who escaped from a Red Deer slaughterhouse in 1990 and survived for months on the lam.

Contrasting with that endearing story, Pyttlik also has a Manitoba Arts Council grant to write a goth-metal opera for adults. He's working with horror novelist Susie Moloney on the story for that one.

He continues to be fascinated by Rapa Nui and says he'd love to visit the island, which measures only about 24 kilometres by 12 kilometres.

"They have a marathon there, believe it or not. . . . I would love to do that one day."

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca

Theatre Preview

The Last Tree of Rapa Nui

Manitoba Theatre for Young People

Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday at 1 and 4 p.m.

Tickets at 942-8898

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 12, 2012 D3