Review: Flowers from my mother’s garden

Two women talk about their lives. Their child­hoods. Their rela­tion­ship with their par­ents. Their OE’s. Their, erm,  escapades. Their uncles and aunts. They are moth­er and daugh­ter. A table, a couple of stools, a slideshow pro­ject­or, and a screen with pho­tos pro­jec­ted onto it provide the back­drop for Kate and Mir­anda Har­court to tell the […]

Review: Clybourne Park

In 1959 a couple sell their house. At 3pm on a Sat­urday after­noon, their neigh­bours cas­u­ally call in to see how pack­ing is going. Dur­ing the friendly dis­cus­sion inform­a­tion about the buy­ers is revealed and tem­pers flare.  In 2009 mem­bers of a com­munity meet at 3pm on a Sat­urday after­noon to dis­cuss neigh­bor­hood cov­en­ants before […]

Benefit Concert for The Court Theatre at Circa

Next Monday (20 August) a group of Wel­ling­ton per­formers will be get­ting togeth­er to raise funds for The Court Theatre in Christ­ch­urch. Badly affected by the earth­quakes (forced to aban­don thirty-five years of sets, cos­tumes, and scripts) The Court Theatre has opened again in a new ven­ue affec­tion­ately called ‘the Shed’. They have a space […]

Review: West End Girls

The first job artist Bar­bara Tate had in Soho was in a bar.  Soon she was charmed into work­ing as a maid for Mae,  a ‘glam­or­ous West End Girl ‘. Ken Duncum has adap­ted Tate’s mem­oir about her time work­ing for a pros­ti­tute in Soho. It’s fun and fizzy in the first half before things […]

FixTV: people in Wellington doing cool things

The first epis­ode of Fix­TV has gone live on their FB page. It’s filmed at Down­stage in front of an audi­ence. I don’t think they’ve quite got the mix right in terms of what they want for the web chat show versus what I want from a show when I’m in a theatre. There are […]

Review: Sunset Road

Lucia and Luka are twins, liv­ing in Rotorua. They can­’t wait to turn 21 and leave town for a dif­fer­ent life. Their Mum and Dad brought them to New Zea­l­and from the Cook Islands. Rotorua is their dif­fer­ent life. Mum and Dad have expect­a­tions and dreams for their chil­dren. But as they get closer to […]

Review: All my sons

Joe and Kate Keller are liv­ing a ver­sion of the Amer­ic­an Dream. They have a com­fort­able life­style, a lov­ing son, nice new neigh­bours. How­ever there is a dark event in their past involving their old neigh­bours which will impact on their future. Arthur Miller­’s Tony Award win­ning play was first per­formed in 1947.  It’s an […]

Review: Chekhov in Hell

Ant­on Chek­hov wakes up in Lon­don after being in a coma for 100 years.  He explores Lon­don – going places,  meet­ing people.  Jason Whyte, as Chek­hov, does­n’t get to say much. How­ever, he is the centre of the play, with the oth­er char­ac­ters using him as a mir­ror to reflect them­selves. Dir­ect­or Elean­or Bish­op keeps […]

Review: Lucrece

An adapt­a­tion of Shakespeare’s nar­rat­ive poem “The rape of Lucrece” by Binge Cul­ture Col­lect­ive. It’s a visual+audio install­a­tion at the Toi Poneke Gal­lery plus a live per­form­ance on Thursday and Fri­day even­ings.  Fiona McNamara’s dir­ect­or’s note states “This pro­duc­tion of Shakespeare’s poem claims the text, writ­ten by a man in a pat­ri­arch­al soci­ety, as a […]

Beautiful Burnout tasting session

Frantic Assembly and the Nation­al Theatre of Scot­land are over here with their acclaimed show Beau­ti­ful Burnout. Tonight there’s a spe­cial ‘Social Media Call’ for social media users.  The cast will per­form two key scenes from the show, then will be avail­able for a short Q&A ses­sion. You’ll be able to film, pho­to­graph, tweet, and/or […]