Archives

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 […]