Review: Eight Songs for a Mad King
King George III, despite having been a learned and enthusiastic sponsor of scientific and industrial progress, a faithful husband and father, and in many ways very liberal for his time (except pro-slavery, just saying), is basically famous for having gone mad. That madness has been scrutinized, diagnosed, and mocked roundly in modern literature, film, TV, […]
Books giveaway: Dreamweavers #1 and #2
Te Rā Aroha Press are about to launch Isa Pearl Ritchie’s Into the Labyrinth, the second of her Wellington-based YA Dreamweavers fantasy series (following on from Awa and the Dreamweavers, released last year). The series features Awa… …an intermediate student navigating changes to her family as a child of divorce, moving to a new school, […]
Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
A Midsummer Night’s Dream was the perfect pick for Summer Shakespeare, traditionally held in the Dell in Wellington’s Botanical Gardens at night in the middle of summer, but then the production moved to the basement theatre at Te Whaea in Newtown, and things pivoted from the usual. It was odd not to be sitting on […]
Review: Dance me to the end
Director Carrie Thiel is seeking to “create connectivity using multimedia, motion capture and virtual reality technologies in a theatre setting.” Working with professional dancer Laura Jones, sound designer Chris Winter and 3D180 VR filmmaker Ed Davis, she’s brought together something that’s quite special. The performance itself is short and is designed as a ‘proof of […]
Review: STUPID BITCH wants a puppy
This is a ‘tune up’ of 2018’s STUPID BITCH which played in a dance studio above Cuba Street in the Fringe Festival. As a work in development it garnered actor/writer Claire Waldron nominations for Outstanding Performer in the Wellington and Dunedin Fringe Festivals. This time around it’s at BATS Theatre in The Heyday Dome. Waldron […]
Review: The Human Voice (La voix humaine)
TW: Suicide Jean Cocteau wrote La Voix Humaine in 1928 as a one-act play. Francis Poulenc set it to music 30 years later, despite having already known Cocteau well for years, and gave the reason for the delay as having needed more life experience to do it justice. During those years he struggled with depression […]
Festival time!
Late January 2020 and the summery weather is here. I finally feel like I’m waking up in 2020 – which is a bit awkward given I’ve been back at work for a few weeks…but enough about work! Brace yourselves for a busy theatrical start to the year. We’ve got three Festivals coming our way in […]
Review: Alice in Wonderland
Circa’s panto this year is Alice in Wonderland, and it is a mystical journey down the rabbit hole (Mt Vic tunnel), to discover fun, some quality Kiwi bangers, and utter manicism (in a good way). Written by Circa stalwarts, Gavin Rutherford and Simon Leary (who play the Dame and the Mad Hatter respectively), it’s a […]
Four Nights In the Green Barrow Pub – Review
Four Nights In the Green Barrow Pub is the third of Cassandra Tse’s shows I’ve seen, and each one was wildly different from the others. M’Lady had me in stitches, The Aliens, in tears. Four Nights, though, took me down memory lane. Having a hundred noisy musical Irish cousins of my own, I was probably […]
Blackbird Ensemble Performs Björk: All Is Full Of Love – Review
Blackbird Ensemble are “NZ’s most exciting chamber orchestra”, and Thursday’s homage to Björk supported that claim more than competently. A collection of strings, horns, percussionists, and Claire Cowan’s multi-instrumentalism brought director Cowan’s arrangements to vibrant and emotional life. The musicians were more than just that; in their glowing boiler suits they became part of a sensory […]