TW: Suicide, overdose, trauma I reviewed a production of La Voix Humaine in February. It’s been a strange wormhole of a year and it feels like a million years ago but also maybe yesterday that I was sitting in Suite Gallery, experiencing this piece for the first time. Writing this review with the last one […]
I’ve found myself in a very lovely, very privileged, and deeply uncomfortable space. I’ve seen three previous Red Scare Theatre Company shows, and I’ve genuinely loved them all. I will have to enlist one of my ‘Ista comrades to review their shows in future, to preclude claims of bias and shameless fangirling. Each of those […]
Oddacity promised an “award-winning, best-of spectacular with a cast of international luminaries performing stylish acts”, under the beautiful skylight in Bats’ Heyday Dome. I wasn’t sure what to expect, knowing the theatre wouldn’t suit aerials or acrobatics, but I hoped for clowns. I was not disappointed in that sense. Oddacity is usually Sachie Mikawa, Trent […]
It was weird for me to go to a show at 93 Kelburn Parade, having completed my own humble BA at Vic almost 20 years ago. In fact, #93 was the site of at least one audition and more than a few rehearsals for me. It’s had a bit of a facelift, now being an […]
King George III, despite having been a learned and enthusiastic sponsor of scientific and industrial progress, a faithful husband and father, and in many ways very liberal for his time (except pro-slavery, just saying), is basically famous for having gone mad. That madness has been scrutinized, diagnosed, and mocked roundly in modern literature, film, TV, […]
TW: Suicide Jean Cocteau wrote La Voix Humaine in 1928 as a one-act play. Francis Poulenc set it to music 30 years later, despite having already known Cocteau well for years, and gave the reason for the delay as having needed more life experience to do it justice. During those years he struggled with depression […]
Four Nights In the Green Barrow Pub is the third of Cassandra Tse’s shows I’ve seen, and each one was wildly different from the others. M’Lady had me in stitches, The Aliens, in tears. Four Nights, though, took me down memory lane. Having a hundred noisy musical Irish cousins of my own, I was probably […]
Blackbird Ensemble are “NZ’s most exciting chamber orchestra”, and Thursday’s homage to Björk supported that claim more than competently. A collection of strings, horns, percussionists, and Claire Cowan’s multi-instrumentalism brought director Cowan’s arrangements to vibrant and emotional life. The musicians were more than just that; in their glowing boiler suits they became part of a sensory […]
During the interval of last night’s performance of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, I popped outside for a bit of cold air and second-hand smoke. As I stood reading the playbills, a group of four people bustled out, one of whom was loudly and petulantly proclaiming “But I want PUCCINI!!!” They did not […]
Liz and Frank have spent the past few years achieving the sort of anaemic existence that passed for middle-class success for my parents’ generation. Careers, a house, a child. Carefully curated shelves of books and knick-knacks in the living room. This living room is the stage for a reunion dinner party; two old friends […]