Review: Miss Bronte

As we walk into the theatre a woman sits on stage frantic­ally writ­ing in a tiny book. She wears a plain blue dress made out of dif­fer­ent pat­terned fab­rics. Her hair is par­ted in the middle and tightly pulled back. Every so often she pauses, looks into the dis­tance, then scribbles some more. The fur­niture […]

New Zealand Festival

The New Zea­l­and Fest­iv­al starts with this free event tonight in Civic Square. I’ve heard there will be more dan­cing than sit­ting so wear your dan­cing shoes. Also open­ing tonight – the Doc­tor Who Sym­phon­ic Spec­tac­u­lar, Deca Dance, Needles & Opi­um, and Our Broken Voice, plus the visu­al art exhib­i­tions. See you there!

Live Leader Board

      Here at the Wel­ling­tonista we’re firm faves of Richard Ain­dow – former edit­or of Fish Head magazine, and Quiz Mas­ter of Wed­nes­day nights at Mighty Mighty – so we were pleas­antly sur­prised to catch him out­side the Rogue & Vag­a­bond last night with a group of lycra-clad lit-up young ladies in incan­des­cent cos­tumes. […]

The New Zealand Fringe Festival

The New Zea­l­and Fringe Fest­iv­al has been going for a week and it’s got just over two more weeks to run. Sadly, I’ve only made it to two shows so far (because mov­ing house) a pathet­ic effort really, because there are HEAPS. Cab­aret, cir­cus, com­edy, dance, music, theatre, visu­al art – there are a lot of […]

Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards 2013 – Winners!

Con­grat­u­la­tions to all the win­ners at the Chap­man Tripp Theatre Awards last night. The awards recog­nise the best of 2013’s per­form­ances and craft in Wel­ling­ton theatre. The big win­ners on the night were Trick of the Light Theatre who won Most Prom­ising New Dir­ect­or, Out­stand­ing New New Zea­l­and Play, and Pro­duc­tion of the Year for […]

Young & Hungry 2013

The Young and Hungry Fest­iv­al of New Theatre is on at BATS Theatre. (Happy 19th birth­day Y&H!)  It’s an excit­ing fest­iv­al that sup­ports young per­formers and crew in gain­ing exper­i­ence in theatre. This year the three plays are…   Dragon­lore. Writ­ten by Nic Sampson; dir­ec­ted by Richard Dey. Alan, Loren, Dena and Chris are gath­er­ing […]

Help Ivy save the dinosaurs!

It’s school hol­i­days again, and if you’re in charge of young people, chances are you’ve already heard that “I’m boooooooooooooooooooooooored”. We’d like to help you out with that (not just because it’s also in the best interests of the non-child-havers to keep kids occu­pied, hon­est)! So, we’re giv­ing away a fam­ily pass (four people) to […]

Review: A play about space

Cap­tain Floren­cia Dreggs (war hero) and her right hand man Warner Horn­shaw are on a spe­cial mis­sion for the mys­ter­i­ous Joy. There’s a piece of kit that he wants them to sal­vage but some­thing is hinky. What exactly is in the box and why does Joy want it so badly? This is a return sea­son […]

Review: Tu

Rimini and Bene­dict are vis­it­ing their uncle Tu in order to find out about their fam­ily his­tory.  Their ques­tions force him to face the reas­on he has been estranged from the whanau for years.  Tu was first per­formed at Pip­itea Marae as part of the 2012 NZ Inter­na­tion­al Fest­iv­al of the Arts, and is based […]

Phantom of the Opera – a Magical Musical

There’s noth­ing like a show, and Phantom of the Opera is cer­tainly one of those. It’s the second longest run­ning music­al in the world so its a bit of a big deal for Wel­ling­ton Music­al Theatre to land a sea­son here at the St James. I’ve been lucky enough to see the pro­duc­tion a few […]