Review: Olive Copperbottom

Penny Ashton presents a new musical inspired by the writings of Charles Dickens as part of Comedy Festival 2017. Olive, a beautiful virtuous orphan, teaches the younger orphans at Mrs Sourtart’s squalid orphanage in exchange for a place to live. Her suitor, Edward Goodsort, was reclaimed from the same establishment by his moneyed family and now lives […]

Shows on this week

At BATS Theatre: Starting this week is an encore season of Onstage Dating by performance artist Bron Batten. Watch as she goes on first dates on stage. (These are actual first dates with a stranger, not with a performing audience plant.) Witness the vulnerability, thrills and heartbreak of the dating experience up close, as Bron […]

Review: Manifesto 2083

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people and injured more than 200 in Norway. Before he attacked his fellow citizens he sent out a 1500 page manifesto containing racist propaganda, philosophical reflections, bomb manuals, interviews he conducted with himself and diary entries. Danish theatre makers Christian Lollike, Olaf Højgaard and Tanja Diers […]

Review: Jekyll and Hyde

Famous French* company A Slightly Isolated Dog (so French, so famous) is back with Jekyll & Hyde. It’s about a very good man – Dr Jekyll – who indulges his very bad side – Mr Hyde – by drinking a potion. Only it’s not long before he doesn’t need to drink the potion for his dark […]

Preview: Theatre shows on this week

  It’s all singing and dancing this week at Circa and BATS. (Just what I need to get me through my second to last week at work before the holidays tbh.) Scarlet and Gold continues at Circa Theatre as does Roger Hall’s “Jack and The Beanstalk”. (My review of Scarlet and Gold here. I haven’t […]

Review: Scarlet and gold

This play dramatises the real events of the 1912 Waihi goldminers’ strike which started in March and went through to November.  It follows the fortunes of the strikers’ families and parallels the struggle with the Suffragette movement in England. Playwright Lorae Parry focuses much of the script on the women in the strikers’ families. (There […]

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 […]

Preview: Hillary Clinton / Young Lover

Dashing Millennial Richard Meros is back in town with a persuasive argument that outlines the conditions and possibilities of Hillary Clinton taking him as her Young Lover prior to the 2016 Presidential Election. (You may recall him attempting the same thing with Helen Clark before election night 2008.)  I asked him some questions before his […]

Review: the beautiful ones

Hana (Awhimai Fraser) was sent away from the club in disgrace by owner Mr Sir (Tanemahuta Gray). She promises boyfriend, Ihia (Manuel Solomon), that she will return on a particular night if he dances from dawn to dusk. But she is frightened by his father Sir Sir, (Nathan Gray) and unsure as to how she […]