Review: No Holds Bard

The actor play­ing Ham­let is suf­fer­ing a cri­sis of con­fi­dence.  Is the play as he remem­bers? Mac­beth drops in to chivvy him along. Then Oth­el­lo and King Lear give it a go as well. This solo show sees Michael Hurst dis­play his skill at deliv­er­ing Shake­speare along with hilar­i­ous­ly phys­i­cal stage com­bat moves. (Some of […]

Review: The clouds

Hap­py 13th  birth­day to The Bac­cha­nals! They are throw­ing us the sur­prise par­ty, leav­ing behind their ‘serious/politically con­sci­en­tious’ plays in order to be ‘sil­ly & have fun’.  The Clouds is sil­ly and heaps of fun while still con­tain­ing polit­i­cal and social com­men­tary. The Bac­cha­nals are grow­ing up, but not away from their roots. (As a […]

Sky Dancer in the Capital E National Arts Festival

We’re grownups at the Welling­ton­ista, well, unless there’s a fart joke to be made, so when there’s a Nation­al Arts Fes­ti­val for Chil­dren, we thought it would be good to get some chil­dren involved, so here are three reviews of Sky Dancer. Hen­ry, age 11:  “Sky Dancer was not like any­thing I have seen before. […]

Review: Beep Test

Binge Cul­ture take a phys­i­cal fit­ness test and makes a show out of it. Upstairs at This­tle Hall there are inspi­ra­tional mes­sages sticky-taped to the wall. GIVE IT A GO. TRIUMPH. We are wel­comed into the room by Simon and Izzy – the run­ners. Some of us are coerced into stick­ing up fur­ther mes­sages. U […]

Review: [title of show] take two.

I realise Kris has already giv­en a review of [title of show] but I fig­ure I may as well throw my thoughts into the ring. There’s no such thing as too many voic­es on the inter­net right? This review con­sists the one-two punch of a guest review from my part­ner Lau­ra, fol­lowed by my take […]

Review: A Collection of Noises

There aren’t any nois­es to speak of in A Col­lec­tion of Nois­es. The play con­cerns the men­tal break­down of an awk­ward young woman and claims Lynchi­an influ­ence, so obvi­ous­ly there’s lots of arch­ly deployed old-time rock ’n’ roll; but every metaphor is visu­al. The cen­tral image is a bank of black and white pho­tographs tak­en […]

Review: [title of show]

 [title of show] is “a musi­cal about two guys writ­ing a musi­cal about two guys writ­ing a musi­cal”. First per­formed in 2004 it was nom­i­nat­ed for a Tony Award for Best Book of a Show in 2008. Ener­gy The­atre have giv­en it a live­ly NZ pre­miere. There’s a table to one side of the stage […]

Review: Residence

The fly­er says “This can­dlelit prom­e­nade per­for­mance will guide you though dif­fer­ent worlds with­in Inver­lochy House.” I was expect­ing some­thing that ref­er­enced the his­to­ry of the house. What I got was an explo­ration of sto­ry­telling and cre­ativ­i­ty.  Each sketch hap­pened in a dif­fer­ent room in the house and did­n’t seem to be con­nect­ed to any […]

The kids are just fine at the Capital E National Arts Festival

While the urban­ites of the ‘ista are all cur­rent­ly abuzz about the Fringe Fes­ti­val, those amongst us who are par­ents (yes, we exist) are more excit­ed about the Cap­i­tal E Nation­al Arts Fes­ti­val set to hap­pen from March 11–23. Dur­ing the weeks, the Fes­ti­val runs an edu­ca­tion pro­gramme, so expect to see bus loads of […]

Review: The road that wasn’t there

Oliv­er de Rohan’s moth­er’s neigh­bours think she is going mad. Oliv­er is pret­ty sure she’s always been mad. She’s always been fan­ci­ful any­way, telling him sto­ries of fairies and tani­wha.  Did she real­ly meet his father in a paper world? How did she get there? How did she get back? What is real­ly going on? […]