Strike: Elemental

Strike are com­plet­ing their Down­stage Res­id­ency with a revis­it of Ele­ment­al. It’s a “per­cuss­ive based the­at­ric­al stage show” which is funny, breath­tak­ing, and intric­ate. Mur­ray Hick­man, Tim Whitta, Leni Sulusi, and Tak­umi Motokawa, are joined by new­bie Tom Broome. Their team work is so good that it’s dif­fi­cult to tell that he’s new. The pieces […]

Some Italian jobs

1. The Medi­ter­ranean Ware­house in New­town has under­gone some renov­a­tions tak­ing out the wall sep­ar­at­ing the pizzer­ia from the ware­house, so now there’s an exten­ded deli counter and you dine among the shelves. The price of an indi­vidu­al pizza may have gradu­ally increased $4 over the past couple’o years but now you can get a bowl of […]

All your beers are belong to us

It used to be that if you wanted a good selec­tion of inde­pend­ent and craft beers, your options were lim­ited: Malt­house, per­haps Bar Bodega back in the day, or a bus out to New­town for Bar Edward. But since the arrival of Hashigo Zake, it seems that boutique beer is in, and there’s a sud­den […]

Cos we ain’t not no hollaback girls

You know what sucks? Get­ting yelled at on the street (unless it’s someone yelling “Hey Wel­ling­tonista, you’re awe­some, come and have some free drinks in my bar if you like” in a non-threat­en­ing way. Please do that). So Hol­laback! wants to do some­thing about it. We’ve got your back!  Hol­laback! is an inter­na­tion­al move­ment to end […]

Review: When the rain stops falling

‘When the rain stops fall­ing’ has a chal­len­ging nar­rat­ive and struc­ture – one act­or (x2) plays two char­ac­ters, two act­ors (x2) play one char­ac­ter, three char­ac­ters have the same name, and the timeline spans 80 years. There’s a fam­ily tree in the pro­gramme to help keep the char­ac­ters sor­ted but even then it can be […]

Pie time

Many fin­gers in many pies and bunny men of the moment, The Nudge have their album release gig this Fri­day night at San Fran­cisco Bath House.  You’ll recog­nise these three from a con­coc­tion of oth­er incarn­a­tions: Ryan  Preb­ble, James Coyle and Iraia Whakamoe with spe­cial guests War­ren Max­well  and DJ Elect­ica.  $15 on the door  

Tom Beard jumps the shark!

(Just kid­ding) Like par­ents – or how we ima­gine them to be – we are immensely proud when one of our snotty brats achieves recog­ni­tion for the things at which they excel. And in this case, Oor Tom has been fea­tured in the My Favour­ite Table sec­tion in Wed­nes­day’s Dom Post Cap­it­al Life sup­ple­ment, being recog­nised for […]

Post show look at: ‘Awhi Tapu’ and ‘An Oak Tree’

‘Awhi Tapu’ and ‘An Oak Tree’ are on until the end of the week.  I found both fas­cin­at­ing for the way the story was told as much as for the nar­rat­ive. Awhi Tapu at Down­stage is set in a small ex-tim­ber town. Wendyl is the lead­er hold­ing Raj, Casper, and Girl Girl, togeth­er. He’s hop­ing […]

Preview: 2011 Film Festival

Des­pite the shock­ing and inex­plic­able decision to omit Patrick Keiller’s Robin­son in Ruins from this year’s Film Fest­iv­al (a dis­aster applic­able only to me I think) the actu­al line-up is as good as every­one says. At least I think it is from sur­vey­ing about 20 out of the 160+ titles in the pro­gramme – hardly […]

The semi-naked truth: Strip clubs in Wellington

The semi-naked truth: Strip clubs in Wellington

So, you want to see some breasts. Noth­ing wrong with that. Where in Wel­ling­ton should you go to see them? For the pur­poses of sci­entif­ic research, we headed to Dream Girls and Mer­maids to find out what you can expect. We also had a chat to a girl who’s worked in both places for the […]