On my press release: A 40-year-old Honolulan returns to the island of Rotuma, near Fiji, where he grew up, bringing along his Caucasian wife and teenage son from a previous marriage. He deals with many difficulties, including his son's rebellious ways and insensitivity to local culture, his wife's feelings of neglect, and the ghost of his dead father, who chides him for disobedience and failing to raise his son properly.

On Hereniko's publicity paperwork: A charming comedy in which a Pacific immigrant filmmaker living in Honolulu involuntarily imports the pesky ghost of his father on a return visit from his home island of Rotuma. He finds the ghost's presence more hindrance than help in resolving relationships with his haole wife and precocious 15-year-old son from a previous marriage.

"Now which one sounds better to you?" asks Hereniko, exuding a hearty guffaw. "I kind of like the one I read to you a lot better, don't you?" We agree, and all is well again.

Hereniko's "Love 3 Times" premieres for a month-long run at downtown's Kumu Kahua Theatre Thursday, under the direction of University of Hawai'i-Manoa Asian theater Ph.D. candidate Megan Evans.

Hereniko, a native of Rotuma like "Love's" befuddled protagonist, has completed more than 15 plays since he first began writing them as a college student in 1975. Now 47 and living on O'ahu full time, Hereniko confesses to a career-long love of documenting the challenges and joys of cross-cultural relationships.

In fact, some of the situations in "Love's" story are loosely drawn from Hereniko's real-life trials and tribulations with his son, now living in England.

"Over the years, I've wanted him to be brought up the way I was brought up by my father," says Hereniko. "With very traditional Pacific values of generosity, being part of a group ... the kind of things that matter to island people. But when I take him to Rotuma, he is so out of place that he's like a fish out of water."

Hereniko says the play's title refers to the three loves in the protagonist's life: his wife, his son and his dead father. "He's constantly trying to juggle these three competing and often conflicting kinds of love because everyone wants a bit of him," says Hereniko. Just don't ask him how autobiographical "Love" really is.