Review: Michael James Manaia

This solo show starts with a wel­come and karakia. After a ser­i­ous start it flips into a mad­cap story.  As the action pro­gresses we hear a man telling us the story of his life –  what his par­ents were like, why he went to Viet­nam, what happened there, and what happened when he came back […]

New Zealand International Arts Festival 2012

The New Zea­l­and Inter­na­tion­al Arts Fest­iv­al opens tonight with a live event in con­juc­tion with the launch of First Con­tact. It’s FREE, fam­ily friendly, and starts at 8:30pm out­side Te Papa. There are visu­als by Linecheck­er and music and dance from the Whitireia Per­form­ing Arts School, The Nomad, Horomona Horo, Rhom­bus in Dub and Rayjah45. First […]

NZ Fringe Festival 2012 into week two

The New Zea­l­and Fringe Fest­iv­al presents emer­ging artists in a fest­iv­al of weird and won­der­ful per­form­ances around Wel­ling­ton. The shows are are reas­on­ably priced (or free) and are held in ven­ues all over the city. The pro­gramme is full of shows, con­veni­ently divided in the pro­gramme into genres –  Com­edy, Dance, Music, Theatre, or Visu­al […]

Review: The Motor Camp

Two fam­il­ies take their cara­vans to The Wind­mill Motor Camp for the sum­mer hol­i­days. Uni­ver­sity lec­tur­ers, Frank (Tim Spite) and Jude (Dani­elle Mason) Red­mond, along with their daugh­ter Holly (Florence Mul­her­on) set up next to build­ing con­tract­or Mike His­lop (Phil Vaughan), his wife (?) Dawn Tairoa (Olivia Viol­et Robin­son) and her son Jared (Ant­ony Young). […]

Review: Wake Less

Binge Cul­ture Col­lect­ive were “attempt­ing to cre­ate an envir­on­ment that’s as flu­id and respons­ive as a dream is.” They want to “push the bound­ar­ies of per­form­ance and explore the things that can’t be done onscreen or online.” I think they have suc­cess­fully achieved these two aims. Wheth­er the per­form­ance says any­thing more than ‘exper­i­ment­ing with […]

Review: Drowning in Veronica Lake

Veron­ica Lake was a film star in the 1940s. She was a tiny, sexy blonde. Her hair was styled to fall art­fully over her face con­ceal­ing one eye. She lived her life in a sim­il­ar man­ner – chan­ging her story to suit the mood she was in at the time. Drown­ing in Veron­ica Lake is […]

Review: Sex drive

 Sex drive is a new dra­mat­ic com­edy from writers Lor­ae Parry and Pinky Agnew. It focuses on three women – Sylvie (Ger­aldine Brophy), Chrissy (Emman Kin­ane), and Dawn (Lyn­­dee-Jane Ruther­ford) – and their quest to become inde­pend­ent women. The cata­lyst for their change from chick­en fact­ory work­ers to small busi­ness own­ers is a Lotto win…of […]

Review: He reo aroha

Do Tawata have a hot-line to beau­ti­ful? This is the second pro­duc­tion I’ve seen from them in as many weeks that has opened my heart and lif­ted my mood. He reo aroha has been around for a few years now, tour­ing New Zea­l­and and the world. It keeps to a min­im­al aes­thet­ic – a couple […]

Theatre: the REAL NZ Festival

The next round of theatre and per­form­ance cour­tesy of the REAL NZ Fest­iv­al starts this week. BATS Theatre has two shows start­ing – Death by cheer­lead­er on Tues­day, and The first Asi­an AB on Thursday. Both have a good buzz from their Auck­land sea­sons. Until 24 Septem­ber and 1 Octo­ber respect­ively. Circa Theatre hosts He […]

Review: Te Radar’s Eating the dog

Te Radar has a pas­sion for his­tory. This show has developed over a num­ber of years from an ori­gin­al com­mis­sion by the Christ­ch­urch Arts Fest­iv­al, in con­junc­tion with Te Run­anga o Ngai Tahu, in 2005. There he explored South Island his­tory. Here, he explores some of New Zeal­and’s his­tory. Explorers, high­way­men, invent­ors, and enter­tain­ers are […]