Notional Significance: Lagoons

[Alf’s back after a long absence! You can catch up on his pre­vi­ous post in this series, or read all Notion­al Sig­ni­fic­ance posts.] The path skirts the six-lane high­way, com­pressed between traffic and hill­side, passing beneath stol­id, gal­van­ised totems that awaken onrush­ing com­muters to an immin­ent decision. Soon the curve of the car­riage­way straight­ens, but the scrubby […]

Review: Krishnan’s Dairy

Review: Krishnan’s Dairy

   One of New Zeal­and’s most-loved plays has returned for a short sea­son at the Han­nah Play­house. Hav­ing not seen it before (des­pite it com­ing around every couple of years for almost the last twenty!) we took the chance to finally go see it. Gobi Krish­nan (“a small man”, as the McGlashan-esque song/narrator would have […]

The Phoenix Foundation – Mountain

The new Phoenix Found­a­tion track ‘Moun­tain’ (first single off their forth­com­ing album ‘Give up your Dreams’) and accom­pa­ny­ing video are very good. Enjoy. And head over to their web­site to get your hands on some of the fant­ast­ic look­ing lim­ited edi­tion cop­ies (12″ vinyl!) of the new album.

Review: Young & Hungry 2015 season

The Young & Hungry fest­iv­al of new theatre provides young people with the oppor­tun­ity to gain prac­tic­al exper­i­ence work­ing in a theatre under pres­sured time­frames. Act­ors, tech­ni­cians, design­ers, & dir­ect­ors have all been ment­ored through the pro­gramme. The three shows in the 2015 sea­son are quite dif­fer­ent in style but uni­formly enter­tain­ing. How to catch a […]

Read Books, Save Lives – The Annual DCM Bookfair

Read Books, Save Lives – The Annual DCM Bookfair

Instead kick­ing off on all the amaz­ing books you’ll find at Book­fair this week­end. I thought you might like to know how cold it’s been in Wel­ling­ton, last night it was 2.7°C in Kel­burn overnight, with a light dust­ing of snow.  Snow is fun except when you don’t have a place to call home, to store your belong­ings, […]

Review: the beautiful ones

Hana (Awhi­mai Fraser) was sent away from the club in dis­grace by own­er Mr Sir (Tanemahuta Gray). She prom­ises boy­friend, Ihia (Manuel Solomon), that she will return on a par­tic­u­lar night if he dances from dawn to dusk. But she is frightened by his fath­er Sir Sir, (Nath­an Gray) and unsure as to how she […]

Sleeping Beauty on Ice

Sleep­ing Beauty on Ice plays at the St James until the 5th July.Part of a world­wide tour by the Imper­i­al Ice Stars, a group con­sist­ing of actu­al skat­ing her­oes. It is based on the bal­let set to Tchaikovsky’s tunes. I’m pretty con­vinced all bal­let should actu­ally be per­formed on iceskates, an opin­ion formed in the […]

Review : Long ago, long ago

Ella (Susie Berry) has a new job work­ing on a psych­ic hot­line. Audrey (Iso­bel MacKin­non), her sis­ter, is a post­gradu­ate stu­dent invest­ig­at­ing the links between fairytales from dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Their broth­er Ben (Jack Buchanan) is inter­ested in mak­ing machines; in tan­gible objects rather than com­puters. Audrey comes to live with Ella while her flat is […]

Two shows in Wellington

Reviews of Second after­life by Ral­ph McCub­bin How­ell, and Not in our neigh­bour­hood by Jam­ie McCaskill.

Ahi Kaa Festival

Cel­eb­rat­ing Matariki with the best of Maori theatre and dance, the inaug­ur­al Ahi Kaa Fest­iv­al offi­cially opens tonight. In a city where some theatre prac­ti­tion­ers think it’s okay to use black­face on stage because ‘it’s what the audi­ence of the theatre form would have expec­ted’ it is wel­come. This fest­iv­al will show off truly innov­at­ive work […]