Archives

Review: I, George Nepia

 I, George Nepia is a beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten, beau­ti­ful­ly realised play. The script by Hone Kou­ka draws inspi­ra­tion from many sources includ­ing Nepi­a’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy. You don’t have to have read the book to appre­ci­ate the play. (I’m not even sure you have to appre­ci­ate rug­by.) The nar­ra­tive is about a man find­ing his place in a […]

The Rugby World Cup and You, Too

Despite Hadyn’s ear­li­er post we know there’s a rea­son­able pro­por­tion of you out there (just as among the Welling­ton­ista itself) that are rel­a­tive­ly meh about this whole World Cup thing. But what­ev­er your opin­ions about the event, it has to be acknowl­edged that a lot of effort has gone into the asso­ci­at­ed off-field activ­i­ties, many […]

Sharing spaces

Fol­low­ing Auck­land’s lead, Welling­ton has opened Low­er Cuba Street as a shared space. There was­n’t much cel­e­bra­tion or fan­fare beyond an arti­cle in the Domin­ion Post about let­ting cars back in. Tech­ni­cal­ly, I’m not sure if the “shared space” has been offi­cial­ly opened, and I’m not real­ly in the mood for cel­e­brat­ing. The idea of […]

Old Groove, new Peel

When Real Groovy closed its doors in May, many music-lov­ing Welling­to­ni­ans were rather sad. But a curi­ous thing has hap­pened — we’ve got a Real Groovy back, sort of. Real Groovy Christchurch suf­fered dam­age to both its build­ing and stock in the Sep­tem­ber 2010 earth­quake, but own­er Paul Hug­gins was deter­mined to con­tin­ue, reopen­ing a month […]

The glorious struggles of the people’s working-class rugby art sculpture

A year and a half ago we were offered a tan­ta­lis­ing glimpse of the mod­el of the Weta Work­shop-designed Welling­ton rug­by sculp­ture, not­ing its resem­blance to a provin­cial junior rug­by tro­phy, a knick-knack gift for a rug­­by-lov­ing uncle, and a vagi­na. And then final­ly the full-size sculp­ture appeared, tucked away in Jack Ilott Green, that […]

Going slowly for maximum pleasure

It was a beau­ti­ful Sun­day in Welling­ton today. The air was crisp and cool but the sun was bright and the first signs of spring were vis­i­ble. For exam­ple, as I wheeled along the water­front prom­e­nade this after­noon, a few brave young men and women were in sleeve­less tops or short shorts, antic­i­pat­ing tem­per­a­tures that […]

Theatre: New Zealand plays in the next fortnight

#RWC11 is prompt­ing an abun­dance of New Zealand the­atre. The plays cov­er NZ his­to­ry, pol­i­tics, and trav­el. On at Down­stage is On the Upside-Down of the World by Arthur Meek. It’s based on ‘Our Maoris’ by Ann Mar­tin. She came to New Zealand from Eng­land with the first Chief Jus­tice. The play fol­lows her as […]

Exquisite Corpse

Perched upon the top of Cuba St, This­tle Hall is known for pro­vid­ing Welling­to­ni­ans with short bursts of visu­al arts. Exhibits pack in and out again at a fre­net­ic pace, and if plan­ning and serendip­i­ty con­spire, trea­sures can be eas­i­ly missed. Take some time this week and get up to the cur­rent exhib­it. Exquis­ite Corpse draws its name from […]

Review: CAV&PAG

Cav­al­le­ria rus­ti­cana by Mascagni, and Pagli­ac­ci,  by Leon­cav­al­lo, are appar­ent­ly oper­a’s most famous dou­ble bill. Both operas cov­er betrayed love and jeal­ousy.  Both end with a death.  They are sat­is­fy­ing­ly epic in this pro­duc­tion by New Zealand Opera, sup­port­ed by the Vec­tor Welling­ton Orches­tra. The cur­tain ris­es on an enor­mous rocky out­crop. It’s a bar­ren […]

WOW 2011

It’s WOW time again, and this year’s show is the most amaz­ing and extrav­a­gant yet. But was it too extrav­a­gant this year? I’ll get to that lat­er. Please note that this post will con­tain spoil­ers about the show, so if you’re going, don’t read it until after­wards okay?  The Welling­ton­ista has a lit­tle pre-WOW game. […]