Author: Robyn

Review: Mark Twain and Me in Maoriland

In 1895, an eld­erly, ill Mark Twain embarked on a world lec­ture tour, in order to earn enough money to pay back the $100,000 debt he held. The tour took him down under, includ­ing a vis­it to Whan­ganui. And it’s this event that Mark Twain and Me in Maor­i­land takes its inspir­a­tion from.

After its premiere at the New Zea­l­and Fest­iv­al of the Arts earli­er this year, the play returns for a short run at Down­stage.

The play sup­poses that Mr Twain took a rather more act­ive role in loc­al polit­ics, inflam­ming the Pakeha, and both pro-European and anti-European Maori alike.

But this is no staid his­tor­ic drama. The play has lash­ings of te reo Maori – some­times trans­lated, oth­er times not, but you’re clev­er so you can fig­ure it out from the con­text. And there’s a pleas­ing amount of song and music, with Mr Twain strap­ping on an elec­tric gui­tar at one point, to join in on a blues num­ber.

Play­wright Dav­id Geary’s innov­at­ive script has moments of high com­edy, yet with the power to get right down into some really gritty emo­tion­al moments. But what I really enjoyed the most was how New Zea­l­and this play is. I’m sure all the places Twain vis­ited on his 1895 tour have their own stor­ies to tell (or make up), but it’s just really sat­is­fy­ing to see an invent­ive, enter­tain­ing play like this that’s come out of New Zea­l­and.

• Mark Twain and Me in Maor­i­land
  Down­stage Theatre until 24 July

Review: Mauritius

I tried stamp col­lect­ing when I was young­er. It ended some­what dis­astrously when I got bored with the gummed hinges used to afix stamps to the album pages and instead switched to PVA glue. My grand­fath­er would not have been so proud of me.

And it’s anoth­er phil­a­tel­ic poppa that’s at the centre of Circa Theatre’s new play Maur­i­ti­us. It tells the tale of New York half-sis­ters Jack­ie (Dani­elle Mason) and Mary (Lyn­dee-Jane Ruther­ford) and the stamp col­lec­tion that belonged to Mary’s grand­fath­er. And in that stamp col­lec­tion is the extremely rare and extremely valu­able Maur­i­ti­us “Post Office” stamps.

Checking out the checkins

Since loc­a­tion-based social media web­site Foursquare became avail­able in here in Novem­ber last year, iWel­ling­to­ni­ans have taken to it with enthu­si­asm.

But, you may find your­self won­der­ing, with all the check­ing-in going on, just where it is that all these iPhone-wield­ing hip­ster geeks are going?

Well, web­site Map.pr is able to cal­cu­late a list of the top 20 Wel­ling­ton loc­a­tions, based on highest num­bers of Foursquare checkins:

Review: Te Radar’s Eating The Dog

Te Radar’s show Eat­ing The Dog has the hypo­thes­is that New Zeal­and’s his­tory and nation­al char­ac­ter have been shaped by all the crazy fools out there, hav­ing ill-fated adven­tures, mak­ing things that don’t quite work, and gen­er­ally get­ting a bit car­ried away.

Eat­ing The Dog is a slideshow at heart, but the selec­tion of sub­jects and Te Radar’s enthu­si­ast­ic deliv­ery make it more than just a bunch of old pho­tos. It’s like vis­it­ing a pro­vin­cial museum and get­ting a guided tour from a fel­low who shows you all the weird objects out the back and tells you all the good stor­ies.

And I get the feel­ing that a show like this would­n’t be pos­sible without the excel­lent online col­lec­tions avail­able via the Nation­al Lib­rary. In fact, I’d love to see more inter­est­ing pho­tos and stor­ies from the archives presen­ted in such an inter­est­ing way.

About halfway through the show, I was hit with a sud­den real­isa­tion – there are no women in Te Radar’s stor­ies. A few wives are men­tioned, but all the main char­ac­ters are men.

Te Radar did address this. He swears he looked for some inter­est­ing women’s stor­ies to include in the show, but it turned out that all the people doing bloody stu­pid stuff in the olden days were men. Or, at least that’s how his­tory records it.

But based on the wide range of bloody stu­pid con­tem­por­ary hand­crafts show­cased on com­edy web­site Regretsy, I sus­pect that look­ing back at the hand­crafts of New Zeal­and’s pion­eer women would reveal a com­edy gold­mine.

Minding your Manners

There was a bit of a ruck­us on Vic­tor­ia Street yes­ter­day, when anti-Man­ners Street, pro-Man­ners Mall pro­test­er Ben­jamin East­on star­ted smash­ing up the road with a sledge­ham­mer.

The incid­ent drew a large crowd, who watched as the police arres­ted him. One of the bystand­ers – a Dom­Post report­er – filmed the incid­ent, and the video is avail­able to view on Stuff.

Watch as police­men with shields and a police­manette with a Taser do their best to dis­arm the self-described “polit­ic­al busk­er”.

The busi­fic­a­tion of Man­ners Mall is prov­ing to be good enter­tain­ment value.

Locals and Tourists

Eric Fish­er has been geo­map­ping Flickr pho­tos of cit­ies around the world. He tracks the loc­a­tions of pho­tos taken by loc­als (blue) and tour­ist­s/out-of-town­ers (red). This is what Wel­ling­ton looks like:

There are notice­able tour­ist areas around Te Papa, Mt Vic­tor­ia lookout and Par­lia­ment. Tour­ists and loc­als are both dom­in­ant along Cour­tenay Place, Cuba Street, Lamb­ton Quay and the water­front. Aro Val­ley gets a loc­als-only burst of blue, as do Te Aro streets off the golden mile.

The New York ver­sion of this has been touted as a way for loc­als to avoid tour­ists, but the way Wel­ling­ton’s com­pact geo­graphy works, there’s really nowhere to run. And besides, our tour­ists are quite nice.

Click though for a look at the big­ger Wel­ling­ton photo, and if you have any obser­va­tions (or cor­rec­tions of my notes!), share them here.

Maranui v2

It’s a cold, rainy Tues­day after­noon in the first day of winter. Why, it’s a per­fect day to go to the beach!

The occa­sion is the first day of busi­ness for the back-from-the-dead Maranui Cafe. After being dam­aged in a fire last year, escap­ing the threat of demoli­tion and man­aging to keep not just the build­ing intact but also the busi­ness, the cafe has been reborn, like a phoenix rising from a pile of cof­fee grounds and sand.

While there’s still a little bit of work going on in the rest of the build­ing, the cafe is well open for busi­ness. It’s much like the old cafe, only with a fresh, shi­ni­er feel to it.

One massive improve­ment is the sound-absorb­ing ceil­ing, which helps cut down the Sat­urday morn­ing echo cham­ber of doom ambi­ence old Maranui was notori­ous for.

The new kit­chen is bright, white, tiled and with one of the bet­ter views offered by a cafe kit­chen in Wel­ling­ton, is back in full effect. The staff seemed busy and buzzy and they have every reas­on to be.

The cheer­ful interi­or was a per­fect place to be on such a crappy winter day (espe­cially after a tor­tu­ously slow bus trip over on the #3), com­plete with a view of the truly miser­able, grey Lyall Bay, that seemed to say, “Oh hai guyz. I’m a surf beach. Let’s go surfin’!!! Lol”. (Man, Lyall Bay is a dick.)

It’s really good that Maranui Cafe is back. It’s quite dif­fer­ent from your stand­ard Wel­ling­ton Cafe, and come sum­mer, the place will surely be jam-packed.

But the best thing about the new Maranui – the all-import­ant Maranui SLC vis­it­ors’ sign-in book is charred and smoky from the fire.

Pecha Kucha 7

It’s time for anoth­er Pecha Kucha even­ing.

For the unini­ti­ated, a Pecha Kucha even­ing con­sists of a num­ber of speak­ers who present 20 slides, talk­ing about each slide for 20 seconds each.

The details:
Monday, 19 April 2010
Down­stage Theatre, Cam­bridge Ter­race
Doors open: 6.30pm, start: 7.30pm
$9 cash door­sales only

This one is going to be awe­some for two reas­ons:

1. It will incor­por­ate the set for Down­stage’s cur­rent pro­duc­tion, “Bio­graphy of my Skin”, which fea­tures a giant video screen – per­fect for PK present­a­tions.

2. The Wel­ling­tonista’s own Tom will be one of the speak­ers! Yes, our Tom will be giv­ing a talk “about a sen­tence by Baudelaire”. What is that sen­tence? Well, you’ll have to come along to find out, etc.

After the jump, the full line-up.

Dialogues with Tomorrow

We’re not sure if sci­ence is the new rock ’n’ roll, but art and sci­ence are com­ing togeth­er in Dia­logues with Tomor­row, a series of col­lab­or­at­ive talks over the next couple of months:

DIALOGUES WITH TOMORROW places artists in con­ver­sa­tion with sci­ent­ists, busi­ness people and thinkers on themes relat­ing to cli­mate change. In each ses­sion, an artist or cul­tur­al com­ment­at­or presents ideas and work inspired by envir­on­ment­al issues. A response is provided by an expert in the field, fol­lowed by a dis­cus­sion that brings togeth­er the know­ledge, ideas and reac­tions of the speak­ers.

The first talk is next Thursday, April 15, 5.45pm at Down­stage Theatre. Called Ant­arc­tica Terra Nul­li­us?, it looks at art’s role in giv­ing us a new under­stand­ing of Ant­arc­tica. Tick­ets are $15 and can be booked at Down­stage.

Check out the full pro­gramme here – there’s a fine selec­tion of speak­ers and top­ics.