Review: The last five years

Cathy is an actress. Jamie is a writer. Both of them are at the begin­ning of their careers when they meet. Five years lat­er after suc­cess for both of them they are break­ing up. Their indi­vid­ual sto­ries are told from dif­fer­ent point of the rela­tion­ship. Cathy’s sto­ry starts at the end of the rela­tion­ship and […]

Review: All our sons

World War I needs more men to fight and Maori from Mataira Moun­tain are being asked to go. Grand­ma Mataira is vehe­ment­ly against their going. Her son Waru believes fight­ing along­side Pake­ha will bring Maori equal rights in New Zealand. With his son Tai and Tai’s best Pake­ha friend Alec Camp­bell, he vol­un­teers. Their expe­ri­ence […]

Preview: The Show Some Love Show

The Show Some Love Show is a vari­ety fundrais­er to raise mon­ey for Welling­ton Women’s Refuge and Te Whare Rokiro­ki Maori Wom­en’s Refuge. It will fea­ture some of NZ’s best musi­cians, come­di­ans, dancers, and poets; includ­ing The East­ern, Alice Brine, James Nokise and Fan­ci­fo­ria Fox­glove. Domes­tic and inti­mate part­ner vio­lence is one of NZ’s biggest […]

Review: Ache

A Man and a Woman meet. There’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing between them that both would like to explore fur­ther… but his girl­friend shows up. They run into each oth­er again. But she’s try­ing to make it work with some­one and he’s got a dif­fer­ent girl­friend. Through com­e­dy and tragedy they keep meet­ing each oth­er. Will they […]

Review: Dead Men’s Wars

Three high school stu­dents from Aus­tralia and New Zealand have won a com­pe­ti­tion to vis­it Gal­lipoli for the ANZAC day com­mem­o­ra­tions. They are escort­ed over by two com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Every­thing is going accord­ing to the sched­ule when one of the stu­dents goes off script. The fall­out affects them all. This is the 2015 STAB pro­duc­tion […]

Reviews of The Angry Brigade and Gifted

Two wordy plays are cur­rent­ly show­ing in Welling­ton. Both are very good. The Angry Brigade by James Gra­ham, direct­ed by Samuel Phillips Four police offi­cers are in a base­ment office in Lon­don try­ing to track down some ter­ror­ists. Threats have been made. Bombs have gone off. It’s not the IRA. In fact, they’re not like […]

Review: Bubblelands by Renee Liang

The clink­ing of cut­lery and mum­bled con­ver­sa­tion greet us as we walk into the the­atre. Blue glow­ing lines show the edges of the fish­tank. It’s a sparse place but I guess the fish aren’t there to live. Blue Cod (Hweil­ing Ow) is prepar­ing to be cho­sen. She is joined unex­pect­ed­ly by Cray­fish (Bem­jamin Teh) who […]

Preview: Bubblelands by Renee Liang

A Blue­cod has been in the tank of a Chi­nese restau­rant for an inde­ter­mi­nate amount of time. She’s not sure how she got there or what life was like before the tank. Then a Cray­fish arrives. He’s ener­getic and she starts to think about life again. Mean­while there’s always the pos­si­bil­i­ty that one of them […]

New Zealand Improv Festival 6–10 October 2015

Improv shows are always dif­fer­ent depend­ing on the ener­gy of the per­form­ers, the prompts they are giv­en, and the ener­gy of the audi­ence. Most of the ones I’ve seen in Welling­ton have been enter­tain­ing. Some are sub­lime and con­tain moments of pure the­atri­cal genius. The kind where the whole audi­ence holds its breathe then exhales […]

Review: The travelling squirrel by Robert Lord

Bart (Paul Wag­got) is a writer who is mar­ried to Jane, (Acush­la-Tara Sut­ton). Jane is an actress who is ner­vous about her job secu­ri­ty and there­fore is keen to cul­ti­vate a work­ing rela­tion­ship with Wal­lace (Gavin Ruther­ford) a gos­sip colum­nist. Wal­lace throws a par­ty where Jane and Bart meet Ter­ry (Andrew Pater­son) who can help […]