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 […]

Giselle by the Royal New Zealand Ballet

Gis­elle is a bal­let I know very little about, aside from one epis­ode of Angel and read­ing the syn­op­sis on Wiki­pe­dia: The ghost-filled bal­let tells the tra­gic, romantic story of a beau­ti­ful young peas­ant girl who falls for the flir­ta­tions of the deceit­ful and dis­guised noble­man Albrecht. When the ruse is revealed, the fra­gile Gis­elle dies […]

A Quick and Dirty Look at the Comedy Fest!

Ah, the NZ Inter­na­tion­al Com­edy Fest – remem­ber when we last had one? Two years ago. How­ever, it’s back, and we’re well into the three week pro­gramme now. If you’ve not got­ten along to any shows yet, here are some high­lights com­ing up in the next few days! Josh Dav­ies – Look! I’m blind.  Nom­in­ated […]

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 […]

Review: The Look Of Love

I’ve seen Ali Harp­er before, at Old St Paul’s in 2012, and I was struck by her humour and pro­fes­sion­al­ism then.  It was a fun night out with my Robot Mum and we both enjoyed hear­ing songs we knew, and some we did­n’t, per­formed by someone who knew her craft and was super skilled. On […]

A couple of new(ish) bars

Hey, remem­ber when we used to be on top of all the open­ings and clos­ings in town and filled with reviews? Yeah me neither. The ‘ista is old and prop­erty-and-busi­­ness own­ing now, and we have Twit­ter instead of our group mail­ing list. But we can still try! So to that end, here’s a couple of […]

Family-owned Naumi Hotels open Naumi Studio Hotel on Cuba Street

There’s been a hotel on Cuba Street for as long as I can remem­ber.  In sixth form my very dar­ing sex-hav­ing friend booked her­self and her boy­friend a room at Trek­kers Hotel for after our ball at Cuba Cuba (but she ended up get­ting too drunk to leave the room).  In the mid naugh­ties, we […]

Preview: The Slutcracker

From School For Gif­ted Chil­dren, and the cre­at­or of Change Your Own Life comes a new queer bal­let for Christ­mas. Loosely based on the clas­sic Tchaikovsky bal­let The Nutcrack­er, The Slutcrack­er tells the story of a queer chosen fam­ily Christ­mas gath­er­ing, and a romantic whirl­wind night through the queer streets of Wel­ling­ton. Dir­ect­or Jean Ser­gent says “I […]

Preview: Ubu sux

It’s cit­izen versus everything in this totally ori­gin­al, entirely reima­gined adapt­a­tion of Alfred Jarry­’s clas­sic avant-garde satire Ubu Rex. Grot­esque, ridicu­lous and deeply pro­found, this irrev­er­ent adapt­a­tion of Ubu Rex draws from a huge range of source mater­i­al to amp­li­fy the mes­sages from Jarry’s ori­gin­al nar­rat­ive. The live show is mul­ti­me­dia in every respect, with […]