It’s not very easy to review improv, because it changes every night, but Snort with Friends is a very good time. From a series of monologues based off audience prompts, the Snort cast (in our case, it was Kura Forrester, Chris Parker, Brynley Stent, Donna Brookbanks, Rhiannon McCall and Tom Sainsbury) plays out a bunch […]
Brynley Stent’s 2019 solo show Filthy Little Goblin is a bizarre and fantastic series of esoteric vignettes and I absolutely loved it. From birthday gifts to self-checkout machines, strange strip performances and word-based game shows, this absurdist show pushes the envelope in terms of comedy and is just very, very fun. Stent has an incredible […]
Mincing is a joy and I absolutely loved it. Jimini Jolly Snr (Tom Sainsbury) runs the best butchery in Timaru, alongside his wife Marge-Irine (Kura Forrester), their son Jimini Jnr (Chris Parker) and their daughter Nicole (Brynley Stent). Jimini Jnr is off to New York to go to tap school, Marge-Irine is on a jaunt […]
With a few little observations to warm up the crowd, Urzila, “doesn’t pick on people,” she says, and reinforces that she can’t see anyone in the crowd because of the raised seating at Te Auaha’s Tapere Nui theatre. She rolls into talking about Wellington, students, and how nobody in their right mind would ever continue […]
After a few minutes of technical issues – which may have been an actual ghost in the theatre, who knows! – we’re brought into this show by James Mustapic talking about being unemployed, to which several people in the audience cheer in unfortunate acknowledgement (myself included). Mustapic is going to do a “proper stand-up show”, […]
As The Wellingtonista’s resident super-fan of afternoon murder mystery television for old people, I was unbelievably excited to get the chance to see The Mournmoor Murders, Maria Williams and Alice May Connolly’s excellent satire of that whole genre. And it was fantastic! Detective Thompson (Williams) and Detective Constable Detective Agent Cooper (Connolly) must unearth dark […]
Craig Geenty comes from a large and extended family. They’re gregarious. They like a bit of a drink. They’ve been whispering about a family secret for years. Great-grandfather Joseph is still officially missing after disappearing on his way back home after making a delivery in town in 1921. Did he crash? Did he run away? […]
Santa Claus brings A Slightly Isolated Dog’s usual charm, wit and innuendo to BATS’ Random Stage for the telling of a tale about a Santa Claus who is rather tired of putting up with naughty people’s bullshit. I shall not go too far into the plot of this sixty-minute show – to save you all from […]