Category: Theatre

Kia Mau Festival week two

What a joy­ful priv­i­lege to expe­ri­ence week one of the Kia Mau Fes­ti­val. I made it to six events. Visu­al­ly gor­geous work with strong themes of connection/disconnection from cul­ture, the neces­si­ty of trans­for­ma­tion, and response to new sit­u­a­tions build­ing off the work of the ances­tors. Each had lay­ers ref­er­enc­ing the past and future, woven through […]

Review: Popcorn

Welling­ton Reper­to­ry The­atre’s newest offer­ing is Pop­corn, Ben Elton’s play. The dia­logue is wit­ty, the script­ing tight and the themes pre­scient despite being writ­ten in 1996. Set in the home of a exploita­tion cin­e­ma direc­tor, Bruce Delametri, Pop­corn takes place over one night as the leg­endary Mall Mur­der­ers invade Bruce’s house after he wins an […]

Kia Mau festival!

The Kia Mau Fes­ti­val start­ed last week and is already rac­ing along. It’s a treat to see Māori and Pasi­fi­ka excel­lence in live per­for­mance — here’s what’s on this week. All I See at Cir­ca The­atre The explo­sion of grief caus­es mem­o­ries to ric­o­chet around her. Mem­o­ries begin to bleed into her real­i­ty. Time col­laps­es. […]

Review: Paradise (Or the Impermanence of Ice Cream)

A man. A woman. A vul­ture, and a kul­fi shop. Indi­an Ink is back with anoth­er one of their fan­tas­tic pro­duc­tions. Lead actor Jacob Rajan deliv­ers a glo­ri­ous per­for­mance where he jumps between sev­en well-formed char­ac­ters to tell the sto­ry of a man trapped in lim­bo and his dreams of his past. Indi­an Ink knows […]

Review: The Saboteur

It’s improv. It’s a game show. It’s delight­ful chaos. It’s The Sabo­teur.  Off the back of sold-out sea­sons in the NZ Improv Fes­ti­val in 2019 and in Mel­bourne in 2020, The Sabo­teur is just over an hour’s worth of improv chaos as a part of this year’s Com­e­dy Fest. Five impro­vi­sors, one of which is try­ing to sab­o­tage […]

Review: Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

There’s some­thing so delight­ful about going into a the­atre show com­plete­ly blind. I knew noth­ing about this play, had read noth­ing about it, all I knew was the charm­ing aes­thet­ic of the pub­lic­i­ty pho­tos and the fact that this was a New Zealand pre­miere. Cap­tain Corel­li’s Man­dolin is a true telling of the per­pe­tu­ity of love […]

Preview: New Zealand Improv Festival 2020

Every year impro­vis­ers gath­er in Welling­ton to cel­e­brate the New Zealand Improv Fes­ti­val (NZIF), but this year impro­vi­sors from over­seas have been COVID-19-blocked. Fes­ti­val direc­tor Jen­nifer O’Sullivan says, “We have built the fes­ti­val on a plat­form of col­lab­o­ra­tion and con­nec­tion, reach­ing nation­al­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly and bring­ing togeth­er amaz­ing tal­ent and per­spec­tives. Of course, the cur­rent […]

Preview: The Glitter Garden

The Glit­ter Gar­den is a drag musi­cal extrav­a­gan­za for kids fea­tur­ing daz­zling out­fits and fierce lip sync­ing. Join Hugo the Gar­den­er on Pride Parade as he attempts to embrace self-care, per­son­al growth and planter box­es, all with the help of his glit­ter­ing gar­den friends. Cre­at­ed by TVNZ’s ‘House of Drag’ win­ner Hugo Grrrl (George Fowler) […]

Review: PLAY

It’s strange to be back in a place like BATS dur­ing times like these, but I’m very pleased I went along to see PLAY, a gay dat­ing dram­e­dy here from Auck­land. It’s a play with­in a play, of a sort — the first twen­ty min­utes or so being a form of a draw­ing-room com­e­dy, then the show […]

Review: PSA — Election 2020

Has it real­ly been a year since I last reviewed an inter­a­tion of Pub­lic Ser­vice Announce­ments? Appar­ent­ly so. The polit­i­cal satire is back, mix­ing COVID, con­tro­ver­sy, and Elec­tion Night into one wild and very time­ly show. Our actors take the stage with a par­o­dy of a well-known ABBA song, now rebrand­ed as “MMP”. This trend of […]