Review: Privatising Parts

It’s hard to come away from Privatising Parts without a renewed sense of optimism for our next step, you know, as humans. Teetering at the brink of a new dystopian singularity for every day of the week – global economic collapse, post-human obsolescence, a flailing mass descent through Sartre’s nausea and out into hyper-Materialist nihilism […]

Let us tell your kids where to go these holidays

The ‘ista may occasionally come across as a bunch of child-hating yuppies, but the truth is about 50% of us have kids, and we need to keep them entertained these holidays. So we’re gonna take them to Capital E. Why? Because we want to play the old school arcade games ourselves. From building mechanical marvels […]

Review: Serial Killers

The Gryphon’s production of Serial Killers is a period piece set in the days when instead of saying “YouTube” we said “network television,” and instead of bemoaning “reality TV” and its effects on the unwashed-at-large, we bemoaned “soap operas” and their see above. One assumes it’s intended as evergreen commentary upon the early 2000s when […]

Review: Manawa

Jimmy King, one of New Zealand’s most notorious criminals, is back in jail. He’s sharing a cell with Mau Vaiaga, a recent immigrant to New Zealand. Mau has committed a crime so outrageous that the New Zealand public are out for his blood. They’re both being represented by hot-shot lawyer Waimanea Huia…but is she as […]

Preview: The Keepers

Thread Theatre Company’s physical theatre work The Keepers  starts tomorrow night at BATS Theatre.   The story is that “two women inhabit an isolated lighthouse on a small rocky island in the middle of an ocean. One arrived by rowboat, unannounced and unexplained – the other seems to have been here forever. The women are both […]

Review: Flowers from my mother’s garden

Two women talk about their lives. Their childhoods. Their relationship with their parents. Their OE’s. Their, erm,  escapades. Their uncles and aunts. They are mother and daughter. A table, a couple of stools, a slideshow projector, and a screen with photos projected onto it provide the backdrop for Kate and Miranda Harcourt to tell the […]

Review: Clybourne Park

In 1959 a couple sell their house. At 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, their neighbours casually call in to see how packing is going. During the friendly discussion information about the buyers is revealed and tempers flare.  In 2009 members of a community meet at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon to discuss neighborhood covenants before […]

Review: West End Girls

The first job artist Barbara Tate had in Soho was in a bar.  Soon she was charmed into working as a maid for Mae,  a ‘glamorous West End Girl ‘. Ken Duncum has adapted Tate’s memoir about her time working for a prostitute in Soho. It’s fun and fizzy in the first half before things […]

FixTV: people in Wellington doing cool things

The first episode of FixTV has gone live on their FB page. It’s filmed at Downstage in front of an audience. I don’t think they’ve quite got the mix right in terms of what they want for the web chat show versus what I want from a show when I’m in a theatre. There are […]

Review: Sunset Road

Lucia and Luka are twins, living in Rotorua. They can’t wait to turn 21 and leave town for a different life. Their Mum and Dad brought them to New Zealand from the Cook Islands. Rotorua is their different life. Mum and Dad have expectations and dreams for their children. But as they get closer to […]