Review: Manawa

Jim­my King, one of New Zealand’s most noto­ri­ous crim­i­nals, is back in jail. He’s shar­ing a cell with Mau Vaia­ga, a recent immi­grant to New Zealand. Mau has com­mit­ted a crime so out­ra­geous that the New Zealand pub­lic are out for his blood. They’re both being rep­re­sent­ed by hot-shot lawyer Waimanea Huia…but is she as […]

Preview: The Keepers

Thread The­atre Com­pa­ny’s phys­i­cal the­atre work The Keep­ers  starts tomor­row night at BATS The­atre.   The sto­ry is that “two women inhab­it an iso­lat­ed light­house on a small rocky island in the mid­dle of an ocean. One arrived by row­boat, unan­nounced and unex­plained — the oth­er seems to have been here for­ev­er. The women are both […]

Review: Flowers from my mother’s garden

Two women talk about their lives. Their child­hoods. Their rela­tion­ship with their par­ents. Their OE’s. Their, erm,  escapades. Their uncles and aunts. They are moth­er and daugh­ter. A table, a cou­ple of stools, a slideshow pro­jec­tor, and a screen with pho­tos pro­ject­ed onto it pro­vide the back­drop for Kate and Miran­da Har­court to tell the […]

Review: Clybourne Park

In 1959 a cou­ple sell their house. At 3pm on a Sat­ur­day after­noon, their neigh­bours casu­al­ly call in to see how pack­ing is going. Dur­ing the friend­ly dis­cus­sion infor­ma­tion about the buy­ers is revealed and tem­pers flare.  In 2009 mem­bers of a com­mu­ni­ty meet at 3pm on a Sat­ur­day after­noon to dis­cuss neigh­bor­hood covenants before […]

No mere cat: the Meerkat encounter at Wellington Zoo

Welling­ton Zoo is now offer­ing MEERKAT ENCOUNTERS. The cap­i­tal let­ters are there to try to con­vey my excite­ment when I heard the news. I don’t think even cap­i­tal let­ters can con­vey how excit­ed I was when the zoo invit­ed us along to meet the meerkats for our­selves. I’m mak­ing it my aim to touch all […]

Wonderful Wellington Lux

Today we have a guest post from Suzanne over at Obser­va­tions. Yay guest posts! Last night I went to the fas­ci­nat­ing Welling­ton Lux light­ing event on the Welling­ton Water­front. (Runs from 6pm to 11pm, 1 to 9 Sep­tem­ber) This  “teas­er” event con­sists of four light­ing instal­la­tions, using new and inter­ac­tive tech­nol­o­gy. The idea is to […]

WOAP: just one burger

I’m run­ning out of food-relat­ed puns. I know right, what is this I don’t even. That’s how much I’ve been eat­ing and writ­ing and writ­ing about eat­ing late­ly. So let’s just get right into it, shall we? Just one review for you tonight. 1. The Great Philadel­phi­an Cheese­burg­er at The Gen­er­al Prac­ti­tion­er.  I’m no real­i­ty TV […]

WOAP overload: a plum and a duke

I love Welling­ton on a Plate, espe­cial­ly when I ignore my bank bal­ance and focus on tick­ing off as many lines as pos­si­ble on my spread­sheet.  I’ve got a cou­ple more places to review still, but in the inter­ests of actu­al­ly get­ting to sleep tonight, I’ll just give you two — Plum and Duke Carvel­l’s. If […]

WOAP: Bake Club

The first rule of Bake Club is you have to talk about Bake Club. That splits off into sub­sec­tions about using hash­tags and Insta­gram. The sec­ond rule of Bake Club is that I sup­pose a link might be help­ful. And the third rule is I’m going to put in a jump cut here. After the […]

Running down underground to a dive bar in Welly-town

A few Welling­ton­istas recent­ly had occa­sion to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ties for get­ting a drink – a seri­ous drink, mind, not a Mimosa or Bloody Mary – at 9:30am on a Mon­day. Now we’d hate to advo­cate heavy drink­ing to any­one (though it’s always worked for us), and none of our spec­u­la­tion should be seen as in any […]