Open­ing last night at Cir­ca The­atre SolOTHEL­LO, is a riotous one man retelling of Shakespeare’s Oth­el­lo. (An unof­fi­cial British Coun­cil rep­re­sen­ta­tive described it as the first time he’s seen Oth­el­lo  per­formed as standup com­e­dy.) The mix of orig­i­nal text, Te Reo Māori, col­lo­qui­al Eng­lish, and stylised move­ment used by the four char­ac­ters con­veys the essence of the sto­ry. Out­ra­geous­ly fun­ny scenes are bal­anced by the qui­eter ones with the end­ing being par­tic­u­lar­ly pow­er­ful. Per­former Regan Tay­lor has the audi­ence in the palm of his hand the whole way through – espe­cial­ly when it looks as though he’s out of con­trol. Out­stand­ing.

Also open­ing this week was Tiki tour at BATS. Anoth­er great com­e­dy solo per­for­mance in which Kura For­rester  plays six dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters who meet each oth­er when they’re on a tiki tour of Europe.  For­rester does an excel­lent job of dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing the char­ac­ters with Bron­son Ataran­gi (our main sto­ry­teller) and Zsuzan­na (who doesn’t speak Eng­lish and main­ly com­mu­ni­cates through smil­ing) being the two char­ac­ters I’d like to see more of. It’s a lit­tle uneven with some of the scenes too long and some too short for my lik­ing but is also full of laughs.

Con­tin­u­ing at BATS this week  is The Vul­tures.  This is the wordi­est and most polit­i­cal­ly point­ed of these three shows. It’s wit­ty and amus­ing with beau­ti­ful cos­tum­ing and a cool tilt­ed set which the cast play around on. Led by fine per­for­mances by Awhina Rose Ash­by and Car­rie Green as sis­ters on oppo­site sides of the deci­sion that has to be made about fam­i­ly land the rest of the cast (Hine Para­ta-Walk­er, Natano Keni, Tola New­ber­ry) hold their own as the plot thick­ens around them. Scar­i­ly famil­iar to some in the audi­ence with one jok­ing­ly won­der­ing whether the char­ac­ters had been based on mem­bers of their whā­nau.

Ka mau te wehi!