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 […]
Circa Theatre’s Christmas pantomime this year is Puss in Boots. It’s a tale as old as time, if that tale were set in the wilds of Te Aro and Karori and featured many dick jokes, jabs at Gareth Morgan and fantastical dance numbers. It’s 2018. Or there abouts. Camilla Miller – a grieving widow woman – […]
Reviewed by our fantastic guest reviewer, Shannon Gillies (@dashrightin) on Twitter! The audience arrived warm and willing to be entertained – and they were. Actual Fact explored story telling. Not in a way that is generally celebrated in our society – such as I’m an adventurer, sportsperson, a politician – listen to or read of […]
I saw four improv shows last night as part of the New Zealand Improv Festival. In the interests of brevity, here’s a joint review of all four. Austen Found Penny Ashton’s Austen Found is a perambulation into the world of one of Jane Austen’s lost musicals – in this case, the story of one Victoria Sandybottom, who […]
I leaned over to my theatre-going companion just before the start of this show and pointed at one of the audience-made spaceships lying on the floor of BATS’ Random Stage. “That spaceship looks a lot like a dildo,” I remarked, presciently as always, and he agreed. The audience, in an ode to predictability, chose it. […]
Directed by Sara Brodie. Written by Lori Leigh. Uneasy Dreams and Other Things is a glorious, hilarious (in some places) piece of theatre, inspired by Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. However, instead of turning into a giant bug overnight, our reluctant heroine, Samantha (Lydia Peckham), grows a penis. She spends the entirety of the play trying to deal […]
Parekura and Ra re-unite on a night out in the town. Their past rekindles an old kind, odd romance for each other again. They enjoy the night and end up back at Parekura’s whare where her father, Chief, awaits the return of his only daughter not expecting to see her infamous friend as well. Chief concedes to Parekura’s demands […]
Indian Ink’s second show of the year is quite a step away from its first, and sets us in the back of Mrs Krishnan’s dairy, ready to celebrate Onam (a Hindu festival of life, death and rebirth). Te Auaha has changed, I note, as I step inside. Far from the end-stage configuration the Whare Tapere theatre is […]
With a head of poisonous snakes and a murderous gaze, Medusa has come to epitomise female monstrosity. Caravaggio painted her. Shakespeare wrote about her. Freud had a bloody field day. The original myth of Medusa follows the fate of the beautiful maiden Medusa who is turned into a monster by the goddess Athena after she […]
She Danced on a Friday is a spiritually evocative and heartbreaking play about a Hamilton murder in the early 1990s. Having only been in the country for four days, 32-year old Margery Hopegood was stabbed to death in a public toilet on the 10th of January, 1992. She wasn’t here for an OE, but to meet […]