Review: Modern Girls in Bed

What would you do if you found Kate Shep­pard in your bed? I’ll be hon­est, I don’t real­ly know, but Mod­ern Girls in Bed attempts to find out. Ally (Maria Williams) and Petra (Isado­ra Lao) are two young women hold­ing their own Bed-In togeth­er, not for Peace, but to improve the drea­ri­ness of their lives. They intend […]

Review: (A Smidge of) Pidge

I’m not entire­ly sure how to describe this show. Part cos­­tumed-won­der, part avant-garde art piece, (A Smidge of) Pidge is a black com­e­dy about iden­ti­ty and anx­i­ety and pigeons. I think. Sher­ilee Kahui dances about BATS’ Pro­peller Stage for an hour dressed in an elab­o­rate pigeon cos­tume. She drinks wine, shares gin­ger­nuts, and recre­ates an icon­ic scene from Love […]

Review: Cabaret de Paris

I’ve had Art vs Sci­ence’s song Par­lez-Vous Fran­cais stuck in my head for two days because of this show and I’m not even a lit­tle ashamed to admit it. The Cabaret de Paris is a glo­ri­ous dis­play of joy, sequins and (per­haps) tit­il­la­tion, and I had a very good time. Com­bin­ing show­girl glam­our, singing, illu­sion­ists and fab­u­lous dancers […]

Review: The Dinner

  Take one part absurd com­e­dy, one part awk­ward din­ner with your par­ents, and a dash of glo­ri­ous mani­cism, and you have The Din­ner, a unique improv show cur­rent­ly being played at Cir­ca The­atre. Being per­formed for the first time out­side of Europe, this play brings togeth­er five din­ner guests (four friends, and a new […]

Review: The Don

Lust, Mur­der and Revenge.  The Don is a bas­tardiza­tion of Don Gio­van­ni, and I mean that in a very good way. One man, accom­pa­nied by a musi­cian, sev­er­al films, and a pup­pet, aims to recre­ate the entire­ty of Mozart’s Don Gio­van­ni in just under an hour and thor­ough­ly suc­ceeds. This show is an hour of glo­ri­ous mani­cism, of many, many accents, and of […]

Review: The Elixir of Love

Friends, plough­men and coun­try­men, you’re invit­ed to the Elixir of Love, NZ Opera’s utter­ly mad­cap new cre­ation. Though my com­pan­ion and I were like­ly the youngest and the poor­est in the audi­ence (opera con­tin­ues to be an art form seem­ing­ly grant­ed to those above a cer­tain age), it was a show that could be enjoyed […]

Review: The Blender (Sundays with BaseJump Improv)

With a dash of insan­i­ty, a smidge of ridicu­lous­ness, and a lot of Welling­ton­ian wit, Base­Jump Improv’s new show The Blender is a wild ride for your Sun­day evening. We don’t tend to see Sun­days as a ‘going to the­atre day’ but with a show run­ning at rough­ly forty-five min­utes long, this piece is eas­i­ly man­age­able between […]

Review: Welcome to the Murder House

Indi­an Ink has done it again. Wel­come to the Mur­der House is dark, dead­ly, a lit­tle bit sexy, and some­thing you def­i­nite­ly should read the press release for before you see because it does not pull any punch­es. Our five main char­ac­ters; death-row con­victs who have a par­tic­u­lar pen­chant for the­atre, take us on a […]

Review: Romeo and Juliet at Victoria University

Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­si­ty’s Romeo and Juli­et is an utter tri­umph of stage­craft. The mood with­in Stu­dio 77, the cam­pus’ main black­box the­atre, seems fit­ting­ly Shake­speare­an as thun­der rolls over­head and rain pours down out­side. We’re all here to see Romeo and Juli­et, arguably one of the­atre’s most played-out sto­ries, but I’ve nev­er seen it quite like this. Our cast, mem­bers […]

Review: The Big Show

The Big Show is a 100-minute extrav­a­gan­za with three UK come­di­ans who you may or may not have heard of. (The com­e­dy world is big, okay?) Despite my utter obliv­i­ous­ness to whom two out of three of them were, this three-act show was a whole lot of fun. Ian Smith Act­ing as our MC for […]