Review: The Saboteur

It’s improv. It’s a game show. It’s delight­ful chaos. It’s The Saboteur.  Off the back of sold-out sea­sons in the NZ Improv Fest­iv­al in 2019 and in Mel­bourne in 2020, The Saboteur is just over an hour’s worth of improv chaos as a part of this year’s Com­edy Fest. Five impro­vis­ors, one of which is try­ing to sab­ot­age […]

A Quick and Dirty Look at the Comedy Fest!

Ah, the NZ Inter­na­tion­al Com­edy Fest – remem­ber when we last had one? Two years ago. How­ever, it’s back, and we’re well into the three week pro­gramme now. If you’ve not got­ten along to any shows yet, here are some high­lights com­ing up in the next few days! Josh Dav­ies – Look! I’m blind.  Nom­in­ated […]

Review: Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

There’s some­thing so delight­ful about going into a theatre show com­pletely blind. I knew noth­ing about this play, had read noth­ing about it, all I knew was the charm­ing aes­thet­ic of the pub­li­city pho­tos and the fact that this was a New Zea­l­and premiere. Cap­tain Corel­li’s Man­dolin is a true telling of the per­petu­ity of love […]

Review: PLAY

It’s strange to be back in a place like BATS dur­ing times like these, but I’m very pleased I went along to see PLAY, a gay dat­ing dram­edy here from Auck­land. It’s a play with­in a play, of a sort – the first twenty minutes or so being a form of a draw­ing-room com­edy, then the show […]

Review: PSA – Election 2020

Has it really been a year since I last reviewed an inter­a­tion of Pub­lic Ser­vice Announce­ments? Appar­ently so. The polit­ic­al satire is back, mix­ing COVID, con­tro­versy, and Elec­tion Night into one wild and very timely show. Our act­ors take the stage with a par­ody of a well-known ABBA song, now rebranded as “MMP”. This trend of […]

Interview Feature: Venus Rising

I sat down with Kath­er­ine Minor, a soloist with the Roy­al New Zea­l­and Bal­let, to dis­cuss rehears­ing dur­ing COVID lock­down, what it’s like being back in the stu­dio, and the RNZB’s upcom­ing Venus Rising tour.  The Roy­al New Zea­l­and Bal­let will be one of the first dance com­pan­ies in the world to return to the […]

Review: Dungeoning and Dragoning

The show is exactly thus – four great act­ors play­ing Dun­geons and Dragons on stage, led by an emin­ently like­able DM. I must admit I had my qualms when com­ing to this show, as I’ve always found play­ing D&D to be more fun than watch­ing it, but the cast is excel­lent, the mood appro­pri­ate, and the […]

A Definitive Ranking of Some of Wellington’s Most Cursed Locations

Cursed places. You might be famil­i­ar with them. Places you walk into and it feels like there’s ghosts, places that are a bit spooky or a bit weird or send a chill up your spine. To put it more col­lo­qui­ally – bad vibes. A place does­n’t have to be dilap­id­ated to be cursed – I […]

Review: It’s Behind You!

We’ve all had ter­rible Zoom calls over lock­down. Night­mar­ish ones, per­haps. How­ever, they’ve nev­er been quite as deadly as this. Trick of the Light Theatre’s (via Circa Theatre) work It’s Behind You! is a piece of digit­al theatre born out of the COVID-19 lock­down. First per­formed live online on 28 May, and avail­able until 30 […]

Review: Bay’s Anatomy

I once again embarked on the odys­sey that seems to be one of Kickin’ Rad/Soap Fact­ory’s Fringe schticks these days – an impro­vised soap opera, set in Wel­ling­ton, with a cast of ten and new epis­odes on the hour every hour from 1–11pm. Hav­ing stumbled exhaustedly but also with a great sense of excite­ment from […]