Review: Lizzie

By Talia Carl­isle Have you ever heard someone scream bloody murder? It’s worth cut­ting down the door to watch LIZZIE, the rock­ing hit music­al by WITCH Music Theatre, where murder sounds hellishly good…. This punk rock’n’rollercoaster will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to fin­ish. So tight­en your cor­set and quieten […]

Review: The Importance of Being Earnest

Circa Theatre’s The Import­ance of Being Earn­est has marked itself down as a fant­ast­ic retell­ing of my favour­ite non-New Zea­l­and play, and an excel­lent night out besides. Staged in a thrust stage in Circa One, Jonath­an Price’s dir­ect­ori­al hand is evid­ent as a play that is often so caught in (delight­ful) intern­al con­ver­sa­tions is broadened […]

Review: The Coven on Grey Street

The first thing that grips me as soon as I walk into Circa Two is Lucas Neal’s gor­geous set design for this show – a huge pohu­takawa that stretches up and across the entire stage, a white pick­et fence, and the out­side edge of a tra­di­tion­al weather­board kiwi house. Cica­das chirp (beau­ti­ful sound design by […]

Review: Olive Copperbottom

Leav­ing Circa on Wed­nes­day after the open­ing night of Olive Cop­per­bot­tom, one of the many things I was feel­ing was deep regret that it was the very first of Penny Ashton’s shows that I’d seen, and I’d missed so many oth­ers.  Ashton is a bright light.  Her energy, her wit, and her joy were incan­des­cent […]

Review: Title & Deed

Reviewed by Lox Dix­on. Presen­ted as a part of TAHI Fest­iv­al, 2022. I’m going to make an earn­est effort to men­tion the writ­ing as little as pos­sible in this review because that’s not really the point and every­one prob­ably knows by now that Will Eno is a phe­nom­en­al writer. That said, the beauty of this […]

Review: Back to Square One?

Reviewed by Shona Jaunas Back to Square One invites you into con­ver­sa­tion between 95 year old Inga’s liv­ing room in Den­mark and her grand­son, Anders Fal­stie-Jensen in New Zea­l­and. It starts with the audi­ence all writ­ing their names on the stage front in chalk which imme­di­ately brings us into the space; we are all involved […]

Review: Skin Tight

Skin Tight is my favour­ite ever play and I’ve been want­ing to see it per­formed since I first read it. Circa Theatre did not dis­ap­point with their iter­a­tion of this show; a glor­i­ously evoc­at­ive piece with incred­ible sta­ging, per­form­ances and move­ment. The play is not just a love story to its char­ac­ters – and the highs […]

Review: The Look Of Love

I’ve seen Ali Harp­er before, at Old St Paul’s in 2012, and I was struck by her humour and pro­fes­sion­al­ism then.  It was a fun night out with my Robot Mum and we both enjoyed hear­ing songs we knew, and some we did­n’t, per­formed by someone who knew her craft and was super skilled. On […]

Preview: The Glitter Garden

The Glit­ter Garden is a drag music­al extra­vag­anza for kids fea­tur­ing dazzling out­fits and fierce lip syncing. Join Hugo the Garden­er on Pride Parade as he attempts to embrace self-care, per­son­al growth and plant­er boxes, all with the help of his glit­ter­ing garden friends. Cre­ated by TVNZ’s ‘House of Drag’ win­ner Hugo Grrrl (George Fowl­er) […]

Review: PSA – Election 2020

Has it really been a year since I last reviewed an inter­a­tion of Pub­lic Ser­vice Announce­ments? Appar­ently so. The polit­ic­al satire is back, mix­ing COVID, con­tro­versy, and Elec­tion Night into one wild and very timely show. Our act­ors take the stage with a par­ody of a well-known ABBA song, now rebranded as “MMP”. This trend of […]