Considering all the facets of Helen Clark’s career, her appearance is the least interesting. And yet, during her ascent from her childhood on a farm in rural Waikato to three terms as New Zealand’s Prime Minister and then a powerful force at the United Nations, commentary on just that has often threatened to overwhelm her achievements.
That scrutiny underlines a satirical new play by the Auckland Theatre Company (ATC).
Created by award-winning writer Fiona Samuel (below image), the devilishly witty Helen Clark in Six Outfits uses the eponymous selection of looks to frame Clark’s life and remarkable, glass ceiling-smashing career.
The outfits range from the familiar (a strong-shouldered, Labour-red power suit) to the surprising (a mountain trekking get-up, her favourite pastime) and traverse the ‘real’ Helen to the version she is forced to present to be seen as appropriate, or acceptable.
Rising talent Brit O’Rourke plays Clark’s younger self while veteran actress Jennifer Ward-Lealand employs genius comic timing to capture the familiar figure in her later years.
The play is an original work by Samuel, created as a commission from Jonathan Bielski, Artistic Director and CEO of the Auckland Theatre Company. “His pitch to me was two words,” she remembers. He said, ‘Helen Clark’, and that’s all.” Samuel didn’t prompt him to explain, instead, through research, began to form the concept.
A double standard
A theme emerged of significant moments in a powerful career, coinciding with constant judgment and negativity from outside sources.
Samuel weighed how Clark endured these attacks, how it impacted her, and the ludicrous double standard.
“She was a politician, a serious person with a job to do,” says Samuel. “I was thinking, ‘this is just nuts’. I mean, men don’t get talked about in this way. People don’t go on and on and on about their hair and their clothes and their voice and their teeth and their marriage and whether or not they have children.”
It turns out, she and Bielski were thinking along the same lines.
“In the wake of the abuse and misogyny hurled at Jacinda Ardern it occurred to me we hadn’t come that far,” explains Bielski. “Given the trail blazed by Helen Clark and the barriers she broke through at considerable personal cost, had we really arrived at a place where New Zealand saw a woman as our leader?”
The play is funny, but serves to remind of this relevance, given the critique and downright abuse of public figures is now even more easily platformed in an era of social media.
“It was important the play be neither a take-down or a hagiography,” says Bielski. “We need to see the complexities of Clark, and indeed all who fight their way to the top, the compromises and the moments of failure just as much as the triumphs.”
Samuel says the fit felt right given she has made a career out of telling women’s stories, amplifying authentic and often overlooked female experiences.
Most recently she wrote the 2025 film Pike River, about two women’s fight for justice after the 2010 Pike River Mine disaster. Television movie Princess of Chaos covered a woman speaking out after being involved in a scandalous affair with former Auckland Mayor Len Brown, and Consent: The Louise Nicholas Story unravelled the Kiwi’s battle to take a group of police officers to court for allegedly raping her. All are based on real-life events.
A female lens
“That’s the lens through which I see the world,” Samuel explains of her motivation, pointing out that when she started her career as an actor, women’s roles were bit parts and side characters. “In any story I’m thinking, ‘What are the women doing?’ For so long, their voices have been either missing or quite muted.”
While Clark herself had no involvement with the play, Samuel found herself invited to meet with the former PM earlier this year during Clark’s rare moment at home in New Zealand between work commitments.
The writer says they did not discuss the script, putting it down to the fact that, having been a Minister for the Arts, “she really has an understanding of what a piece of theatre is. I thought it was quite an act of trust.”
Helen Clark in Six Outfits
7–26 April, 2026
atc.co.nz
