Sacha Lees

Wel­ling­ton artist Sacha Lees began her career work­ing on The Lord of the Rings tri­logy as an illus­trat­or, air­brush artist and creature design­er. These days Lees, ori­gin­ally from the West Coast, is a lead­ing artist. She developed her paint­ing tech­nique in Florence and now spe­cial­ises in the “fant­ast­ic” genre – a move­ment spe­cial­ising in myth­ic­al creatures and […]

Review: The Father

André lives in his flat where Anne, his daugh­ter, vis­its him. He’d rather his daugh­ter Elise vis­ited but she’s busy with her art work. Or is she? And who is Pierre? And why does Laura keep com­ing around? This show explores real­ity and per­cep­tion in a fam­ily situ­ation which is famil­i­ar to many people. What […]

Zoom zoom Zoomy?

We wrote about Uber when they first came to Wel­ling­ton so I’m not here to regur­git­ate the many cons (though this ‘game’ about the life of an Uber driver is worth a play, sim­il­ar to Action Sta­tion’s Pick A Path). The obvi­ous truth is that for pas­sen­gers, Uber is super con­veni­ent. Now there’s New Zea­l­and-based […]

Review: Kátya Kabanová

Kátya Kaban­ová was the first opera I ever saw, back in 1996 when it was here for the Inter­na­tion­al Fest­iv­al. I was 16, and we got $5 tick­ets to the dress rehersal through drama class. I was over­whelmed by the music and the draaaaama and the rain on stage and the cliff that rose up on hydraul­ics […]

What’s on this week?

Here’s a round up of what shows are on this week. At Circa Theatre… Ana­hera, on at Circa Theatre to 7 Octo­ber 2017 A con­tem­por­ary domest­ic thrill­er (in the style of Broad­church) about a strug­gling kiwi fam­ily. Liz and Peter Hunter have it all. A great mar­riage, suc­cess­ful careers, a beau­ti­ful house and two won­der­ful chil­dren. Until […]

Review: That Bloody Woman

Kate Shep­pard, “the lead­ing light of the New Zea­l­and women’s suf­frage move­ment” tells her story in this rock music­al by Luke Di Somma and Gregory Cooper. Dir­ec­ted by Kip Chap­man, (with Jen­nifer Ward-Lea­l­and this season’s Rehears­al Dir­ect­or) the show is ter­rif­ic.  All the ele­ments of the best music­als are here – a well con­struc­ted dra­mat­ic […]

Preview: Anahera

Ana­hera is the new play from Emma Kin­ane. Described as an “enthralling mix of an intense miss­ing child drama and a behind-closed-doors look at New Zealand’s social ser­vices” it’s a con­tem­por­ary domest­ic thrill­er about a strug­gling Kiwi fam­ily and how one woman mak­ing a stand could make all the dif­fer­ence. A final­ist in last year’s Adam […]

Review: The Pickle King

The Pickle King is on now at the Han­nah Play­house and is a col­our­ful, quirky and unique tale of love, death and what is worth pre­serving. Once the finest hotel in town, the Empire is now as faded as the dreams of the piano play­er who haunts the lobby. Ammachy runs the Empire with an […]

Preview: The Wholehearted

Massive Com­pany is bring­ing The Whole­hearted to Wel­ling­ton in Septem­ber. An hon­est por­tray­al of the extreme power of love, it was developed through con­ver­sa­tions with their loc­al com­munity, ask­ing them to share their per­son­al stor­ies of affec­tion and ded­ic­a­tion. The res­ult is a heart-warm­ing devised theatre work that spans gen­er­a­tions, genders and cul­tures. Massive Company’s […]

In which we solve all traffic problems forever

In purely coin­cid­ent­al tim­ing just before an elec­tion, the Nation­al Party is hand­ing out new roads in an Oprah-like fash­ion. You get a road, and you get a road and YOU get a road. How we’re going to get a couple of bil­lion dol­lars of new roads out of a budget full of holes for […]