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 […]
What would you do if you found Kate Sheppard in your bed? I’ll be honest, I don’t really know, but Modern Girls in Bed attempts to find out. Ally (Maria Williams) and Petra (Isadora Lao) are two young women holding their own Bed-In together, not for Peace, but to improve the dreariness of their lives. They intend […]
Maggie Flynn is buried and under the earth at Kororāreka. She’s dead but a thing like that isn’t going to stop her from telling us her tale in the hopes that her memory at least will last a little longer. Through dead husbands and lovers, from the captain of a ship of men to the […]
I’m not entirely sure how to describe this show. Part costumed-wonder, part avant-garde art piece, (A Smidge of) Pidge is a black comedy about identity and anxiety and pigeons. I think. Sherilee Kahui dances about BATS’ Propeller Stage for an hour dressed in an elaborate pigeon costume. She drinks wine, shares gingernuts, and recreates an iconic scene from Love […]