With the region celebrating the 150th anniversary of the discovery of gold this year, Remarkable Theatre is joining in with a mixture of gold rush history and tall tales in its Queenstown Gardens production Greed, Glamour and Grudges - Tales of Gold. Joe Dodgshun speaks to a member of the cast about the pioneering Wakatipu character he plays.
Captain William Henry "Bully" Hayes was a "larrikin"mariner, who came to New Zealand in 1862 after facing bankruptcy in Adelaide (1858) and Sydney (1860), says Jason Fullerton, who is set to play Hayes in Greed, Glamour and Grudges - Tales of Gold, which starts on Friday.
Fullerton describes Hayes, the son of an Ohio grog shanty keeper and a "close relative" of the 19th president of the United States, Rutherford Hayes, as quite an infamous character, always experiencing run-ins with the government and "everyone else".
"Hayes used to travel with the Buckingham troupe as an entertainer and then ended up owning the competing hotel [the Prince of Wales] across the road from them in Arrowtown.
"They ended up fighting, the turning point of which was when he married one of the Buckinghams' daughters [Rosie]."
However, his past was set to catch up with him, which will be illustrated in the production's "barbershop scene", Mr Fullerton says.
His reputation exposed, the "nice American gentleman" left Arrowtown and moved north to Nelson, surviving a suspicious wreck resulting in the drowning of his wife and child.
He resumed his nautical sculduggery, and in 1877 disappeared, presumed dead after he "got into an altercation with a Dutchman, was hit over the head with a iron tiller and fell overboard".
Born in Cromwell and raised in Wanaka, Fullerton said the opportunity to play Hayes was one "rich with potential".
"He's such a good character to play because he has such a chequered and rich past, so there's a lot of ideas and you can get a sense of his attitude.
"It was rough and tough and there was maybe one or two police officers in the entire area, so a lot of the time it was brute force and gangs - a bit like the wild west, but here in New Zealand," Fullerton said.
• Greed, Glamour and Grudges - Tales of Gold will be performed at the Queenstown Gardens from January 27 to 29 as part of the QLDC's Summerdaze festivities. Entry is by gold coin.
For further details, visit www.remarkabletheatre.org.nz
