Review: Three days in the country

Set against the back­drop of 1850’s Rus­sia. Serfs (aka slaves) still work the land under the estate holder’s con­trol.  Reform is com­ing and the coun­try is rest­less. Rakitin is vis­it­ing his friend Arkady at his coun­try estate.  Arkady’s wife Nat­a­lya is recov­er­ing from her ill­ness. Their son Kolya, and their ward Vera, are spend­ing time […]

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 […]