‘Nothing to be Done’ but laugh

Come­di­an Luwi­ta Hana Rand­hawa does look a lit­tle seri­ous below. She looks like some­one who prob­a­bly does­n’t take a lot of non­sense. Some­one who would han­dle a heck­ler with a dry, sassy quip that would leave every­one wish­ing they’d thought of such a line, because every­one has those “If only I’d said that” moments. I […]

Domestic violence isn’t funny. Hopefully these comedians are

Last week, we gave away a pass t0 Ray­bon Kan’s com­e­dy show as a favour to a friend. On hear­ing about what his show con­tained, I am so very sor­ry we did. Jokes about Chris Brown beat­ing his girl­friend? Not okay.  Here are some handy New Zealand sta­tis­tics from Wom­en’s Refuge One in three women […]

Win tickets to Raybon Without a Cause

[pullquote]Why did Kingston kill Bernie? Because he tried to mount Vic­to­ria [/pullquote] Every­one likes jokes, right? And every­one likes some­thing for free. So would you like to win a dou­ble pass to the open­ing of Ray­bon Kan’s com­e­dy show on May 7? Fresh from record­ing his first live stand-up DVD, Ray­bon Kan returns to the […]

The best of Raybon Kan

The com­e­dy fest is on right now! And we haven’t got­ten around to organ­is­ing our­selves to get along to things, because day jobs are real­ly busy right now. Sor­ry! So instead, we’ll go with things that are eas­i­ly pre­sent­ed to us. Com­e­dy is a hard game,  so if you can man­age to make a liv­ing […]

Review: Serial Killers

The Gryphon’s pro­duc­tion of Ser­i­al Killers is a peri­od piece set in the days when instead of say­ing “YouTube” we said “net­work tele­vi­sion,” and instead of bemoan­ing “real­i­ty TV” and its effects on the unwashed-at-large, we bemoaned “soap operas” and their see above. One assumes it’s intend­ed as ever­green com­men­tary upon the ear­ly 2000s when […]

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 […]

Wellywood: blown away

So appar­ent­ly we vot­ed for the Welling­ton sign that’s being blown away. Nat­u­ral­ly, Rob­bie Ellis has even more to say about it.

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: 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 […]

Our Hearts Will Go On

I was alert­ed to a music video of a long-haired fel­low per­form­ing an emo­tion­al ren­di­tion of “Titan­ic” theme song “My Heart Will Go On”. I start­ed watch­ing it, and it was all going well when sud­den­ly at the 19-sec­ond mark I realised some­thing very impor­tant: the video was filmed in Welling­ton. This makes it even […]