For the Love of Spam - Reviewed by Tanya Piejus | Regional News Connecting Wellington
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For the Love of Spam

Written by: Sierra Sevilla

Directed by: Izzy Rabey

Te Auaha, 3rd Jun 2025

Reviewed by: Tanya Piejus

As director Izzy Rabey notes in the programme, For the Love of Spam is often “the first encounter audiences have with someone from Guam” and that was certainly true in my case. I’ve never knowingly met anyone from this small Micronesian island perched on the lip of the Marianas Trench and knew little about it apart from its bloody role as a Japan–US battleground in World War II. I also didn’t know that the canned meat made famous by a Monty Python song was so integral to the culture there.

Sierra Sevilla is a wonderfully engaging performer and has written this show, on in Wellington as part of the Kia Mau Festival, from her heart. With a few simple props and set pieces – most notably a cutout of Guam made from Astroturf and a cross constructed from piled-up Spam tins – she tells us the story of her waymaking in life as a 33-year-old CHamorou/Filipino/White woman and lover of Spam. Along the way, various audience members are brought into the story, including one brave young woman who becomes Problematic Roommate Number 5, who thinks Spam is gross and not something you should be eating in a Boston university dorm.

The CHamorou creation story of Guam, playing Quidditch to fit in, a hunky Spam Daddy who provides comfort while she’s homesick in London, and a conversation during sex with her husband about introducing their future kids to the tinned comestible all feature in a hilarious tale of finding her place in the world. Punctuated by song and dance, it’s all light-hearted and entertaining until the final kicker where 14 minutes take on a deadly significance and we find out how vital the presence of a foodstuff can be in someone’s life.

Sevilla and Rabey have beautifully achieved what they set out to do – making a work about colonialism and Indigenous people’s rights funny and engaging without alienating the audience. I left the theatre feeling enlightened in a way I never expected from a play ostensibly concerning spiced ham.

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