I saw four improv shows last night as part of the New Zealand Improv Festival. In the interests of brevity, here’s a joint review of all four. Austen Found Penny Ashton’s Austen Found is a perambulation into the world of one of Jane Austen’s lost musicals – in this case, the story of one Victoria Sandybottom, who […]
I leaned over to my theatre-going companion just before the start of this show and pointed at one of the audience-made spaceships lying on the floor of BATS’ Random Stage. “That spaceship looks a lot like a dildo,” I remarked, presciently as always, and he agreed. The audience, in an ode to predictability, chose it. […]
Directed by Sara Brodie. Written by Lori Leigh. Uneasy Dreams and Other Things is a glorious, hilarious (in some places) piece of theatre, inspired by Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. However, instead of turning into a giant bug overnight, our reluctant heroine, Samantha (Lydia Peckham), grows a penis. She spends the entirety of the play trying to deal […]
Indian Ink’s second show of the year is quite a step away from its first, and sets us in the back of Mrs Krishnan’s dairy, ready to celebrate Onam (a Hindu festival of life, death and rebirth). Te Auaha has changed, I note, as I step inside. Far from the end-stage configuration the Whare Tapere theatre is […]
She Danced on a Friday is a spiritually evocative and heartbreaking play about a Hamilton murder in the early 1990s. Having only been in the country for four days, 32-year old Margery Hopegood was stabbed to death in a public toilet on the 10th of January, 1992. She wasn’t here for an OE, but to meet […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]