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 […]