Review: Making Friends Collective double bill

Stand up love  Freddy is a comedi­an and has a drink­ing prob­lem. Ana wants him to stop. Their rela­tion­ship has prob­lems but they love each oth­er. Isn’t that enough? I find the messy set – a bed with a couch backed on to the bed­head plus liv­ing items strewn around – appeal­ing, reflect­ing as it does the […]

Review: Hart

There is a ring of white in the middle of the stage. A man stands inside it, slightly to the side. In the dark we listen to politi­cians and radio hosts dis­cuss Indi­gen­ous Aus­trali­ans. Taken from their fam­il­ies ‘for their own good’, ‘to save them from them­selves’. A lone voice offers an apo­logy. The sober­ing […]

Reviews of Hillary Clinton / Young Lover and Discharge goes back to school

Review: Hil­lary Clin­ton / Young Lov­er Richard Mer­os is back. Older, more trav­elled, more ambi­tious in his attempt to bring about a golden age of trans-pacific part­ner­ships.  He’s con­vinced Hil­lary Clin­ton needs a young lov­er to boost her poll rat­ings so that she can get into the White House. (And be in charge.) (Of the […]

Review: At the end of my hands

Six per­formers from integ­rated com­pany Equal Voices Arts, dressed simply in grey, black, and white, enact stor­ies explor­ing Deaf cul­ture for Deaf and hear­ing audi­ences. Stor­ies such as flir­ta­tions at the swim­ming pool and get­ting bus­ted for speed­ing (hil­ari­ous!) are con­tras­ted with more touch­ing stor­ies. The per­formers Kylie Wil­lis, Alex Lodge, Mihailo Lad­je­vac, Shaun Fahey, […]

Review: Spring Awakening

Sev­en chil­dren are pushed into a world where they fumble their way towards adult­hood. Mor­itz and Thea are wor­ried about their aca­dem­ic records. Wendla wants to know where babies come from. Martha’s not sure if her home­life is nor­mal. Mel­chi­or has a lot of ques­tions. Hän­schen is try­ing to keep his head down. Ilse just […]

Reviews of two Christmas themed shows in Wellington

This head­ing is not totally accur­ate as one of the shows con­sists of four dif­fer­ent shows. You only need to buy one tick­et to see the four shows, so for two tick­ets you can see five shows. Con­fused? Wel­come to the reviews for Stages of Cheer  and A Christ­mas Karel Čapek at BATS Theatre! (Bring […]

Review: The last five years

Cathy is an act­ress. Jam­ie is a writer. Both of them are at the begin­ning of their careers when they meet. Five years later after suc­cess for both of them they are break­ing up. Their indi­vidu­al stor­ies are told from dif­fer­ent point of the rela­tion­ship. Cathy’s story starts at the end of the rela­tion­ship and […]

Review: Stutterpop: the Queen’s speech

Stut­ter­pop writ­ten and per­formed by Sam Brooks is enter­tain­ing mix­ture of lip­syncing and storytelling which explores Brooks’ love life, and his love for life. He walks onto the stage look­ing fab­ulous in a long hooded cape. It’s whipped off to reveal a glit­tery top and spark­ling heels leav­ing him look­ing a little like clas­sic Eddie Izzard. […]

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 […]