Review: Ze: queer as fuck!

A mono­logue of self dis­cov­ery from a gender­queer, kinky, femme­sexu­al, poly­m­inded, gay-divor­cee. From the open­ing sequence through to the end, this well con­struc­ted show ful­fills the pro­gramme prom­ise that “by the end of this show you will know more about me than most people care to learn and hope­fully some­thing about your­self.” Through sev­en pivotal […]

Review: Manifesto 2083

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people and injured more than 200 in Nor­way. Before he attacked his fel­low cit­izens he sent out a 1500 page mani­festo con­tain­ing racist pro­pa­ganda, philo­soph­ic­al reflec­tions, bomb manu­als, inter­views he con­duc­ted with him­self and diary entries. Dan­ish theatre makers Chris­ti­an Lol­like, Olaf Højgaard and Tanja Diers […]

Review: The basement tapes

After her Grand­ma’s death a woman is tasked with clean­ing out the base­ment of her house. As she sifts through what seems like every single thing her Grandma ever owned she dis­cov­ers a tape record­er. Then she finds a box of tapes – some of which work, and some which don’t. As she listens to the […]

Review: Jekyll and Hyde

Fam­ous French* com­pany A Slightly Isol­ated Dog (so French, so fam­ous) is back with Jekyll & Hyde. It’s about a very good man – Dr Jekyll – who indulges his very bad side – Mr Hyde – by drink­ing a potion. Only it’s not long before he doesn’t need to drink the potion for his dark […]

Review: The Undertow

The Under­tow is a massive the­at­ric­al epic presen­ted by 35 per­formers from Te Rākau Theatre. Writ­ten by Helen Pearse-Otene and dir­ec­ted by Jim Mori­arty it fol­lows the story of sev­en gen­er­a­tions of Wel­ling­to­ni­ans – Māori and Pāke­hā – as they carve out a life in Ōwhiro. Each of the four plays explores the exper­i­ence of […]

Preview: Theatre shows on this week

  It’s all singing and dan­cing this week at Circa and BATS. (Just what I need to get me through my second to last week at work before the hol­i­days tbh.) Scar­let and Gold con­tin­ues at Circa Theatre as does Roger Hall’s “Jack and The Bean­stalk”. (My review of Scar­let and Gold here. I haven’t […]

Wellington Theatre Awards 2016

The Wel­ling­ton Theatre Awards were held at Te Whaea on Sunday night. Hos­ted by James Nokise with sup­port from Allan Henry and music provided by Hay­ley Sproull it was an even­ing cel­eb­rat­ing the last year of pro­fes­sion­al theatre in Wel­ling­ton. Linda Wilson from Circa Theatre was recog­nised for her con­tri­bu­tion to Wel­ling­ton theatre with the […]

Preview: The Better Best Possible Album Party That Anybody Has Ever Been Two

I’m pretty excited that Album Party is the first show to bene­fit from BATS Theatre and The Base­ment Theatre (Auck­land) work­ing togeth­er to sup­port the best new emer­ging shows to tour to both cit­ies. A con­cert, a com­edy gig and a play all rolled into one, The Bet­ter Best Pos­sible Album Party That Any­body Has […]

Review: Scarlet and gold

This play dram­at­ises the real events of the 1912 Waihi gold­miners’ strike which star­ted in March and went through to Novem­ber.  It fol­lows the for­tunes of the strikers’ fam­il­ies and par­al­lels the struggle with the Suf­fra­gette move­ment in Eng­land. Play­wright Lor­ae Parry focuses much of the script on the women in the strikers’ fam­il­ies. (There […]

Review: Making Friends Collective double bill

Stand up love  Freddy is a comedi­an and has a drink­ing prob­lem. Ana wants him to stop. Their rela­tion­ship has prob­lems but they love each oth­er. Isn’t that enough? I find the messy set – a bed with a couch backed on to the bed­head plus liv­ing items strewn around – appeal­ing, reflect­ing as it does the […]