Review: Te Pō

Three men gath­er in a room. Detect­ive Inspect­or Brett is look­ing for Bruce Mason who has gone miss­ing. Rev­er­end Athol Sedgewick had din­ner with Mason the night before last and is pos­sibly the last per­son to see him before he dis­ap­peared. Werihe has an eight o’c­lock appoint­ment with the play­wright. No-one has any idea where he […]

Review: Hart

There is a ring of white in the middle of the stage. A man stands inside it, slightly to the side. In the dark we listen to politi­cians and radio hosts dis­cuss Indi­gen­ous Aus­trali­ans. Taken from their fam­il­ies ‘for their own good’, ‘to save them from them­selves’. A lone voice offers an apo­logy. The sober­ing […]

NZ Fringe Festival reviews x 3

Reviews for three neat shows in the Fringe Fest­iv­al. See­ing the city: a tast­ing menu by Ania and Kim Upstill, at 17 Tory street, final show­ing 19 Feb­ru­ary 2016 We are greeted at the door by Ania Upstill and invited to wash our hands. She dir­ects us on to Pip­piajna Tui who shows us to […]

Review: Vladimir the Crow: Whispering Ghoul

A bare stage greets us at the Gryphon Theatre.  It seems big­ger than usu­al with a sound­scape that hints at vast des­ol­ate spaces where the only thing alive is the whist­ling wind. Then noise! Lights! And a tattered creature that stut­ters out from the wings as if glimpsed by light­ning flashes. Vladi­mir the Crow is […]

Reviews of Hillary Clinton / Young Lover and Discharge goes back to school

Review: Hil­lary Clin­ton / Young Lov­er Richard Mer­os is back. Older, more trav­elled, more ambi­tious in his attempt to bring about a golden age of trans-pacific part­ner­ships.  He’s con­vinced Hil­lary Clin­ton needs a young lov­er to boost her poll rat­ings so that she can get into the White House. (And be in charge.) (Of the […]

Preview: Hillary Clinton / Young Lover

Dash­ing Mil­len­ni­al Richard Mer­os is back in town with a per­suas­ive argu­ment that out­lines the con­di­tions and pos­sib­il­it­ies of Hil­lary Clin­ton tak­ing him as her Young Lov­er pri­or to the 2016 Pres­id­en­tial Elec­tion. (You may recall him attempt­ing the same thing with Helen Clark before elec­tion night 2008.)  I asked him some ques­tions before his […]

Review: At the end of my hands

Six per­formers from integ­rated com­pany Equal Voices Arts, dressed simply in grey, black, and white, enact stor­ies explor­ing Deaf cul­ture for Deaf and hear­ing audi­ences. Stor­ies such as flir­ta­tions at the swim­ming pool and get­ting bus­ted for speed­ing (hil­ari­ous!) are con­tras­ted with more touch­ing stor­ies. The per­formers Kylie Wil­lis, Alex Lodge, Mihailo Lad­je­vac, Shaun Fahey, […]

Review: Spring Awakening

Sev­en chil­dren are pushed into a world where they fumble their way towards adult­hood. Mor­itz and Thea are wor­ried about their aca­dem­ic records. Wendla wants to know where babies come from. Martha’s not sure if her home­life is nor­mal. Mel­chi­or has a lot of ques­tions. Hän­schen is try­ing to keep his head down. Ilse just […]

It’s almost Arts Festival season!

Wel­ling­to­ni­ans rejoice for it is almost ARTS FESTIVAL SEASON! From the begin­ning of Feb­ru­ary through March we’ll be able to enjoy work in devel­op­ment, new and exper­i­ment­al acts, and some of the best stuff from around the world. First one to start is the Fringe Fest­iv­al.  As they say on the web­site “Our fest­iv­al is open access […]

Reviews of two Christmas themed shows in Wellington

This head­ing is not totally accur­ate as one of the shows con­sists of four dif­fer­ent shows. You only need to buy one tick­et to see the four shows, so for two tick­ets you can see five shows. Con­fused? Wel­come to the reviews for Stages of Cheer  and A Christ­mas Karel Čapek at BATS Theatre! (Bring […]