Review: The Saboteur

It’s improv. It’s a game show. It’s delight­ful chaos. It’s The Saboteur.  Off the back of sold-out sea­sons in the NZ Improv Fest­iv­al in 2019 and in Mel­bourne in 2020, The Saboteur is just over an hour’s worth of improv chaos as a part of this year’s Com­edy Fest. Five impro­vis­ors, one of which is try­ing to sab­ot­age […]

Review: Public Service Announcements – Indignity War

Judith Collins is on the warpath, Par­lia­ment is in chaos, and Simon Bridges is lead­ing cho­reo­graphed dances in this iter­a­tion of PSA – Indig­nity War. As Dav­id Sey­mour tables a bill to halve the amount of MPs in Par­lia­ment, all the major parties are pan­ick­ing about who they’ll have to let go. Jacinda has the […]

Review: Uther Dean’s Elevation

This is a show some­what about the hit U2 song “Elev­a­tion” (which I still haven’t heard) and some­what not at all about that song. From the Fast and the Furi­ous films to fights in Bur­ger King, new part­ners and the cine­mat­ic clas­sic Lara Croft: Tomb Raid­er, Dean spins a verb­ose tale of coin­cid­ence, ennui and […]

Review: Absolute Monster by Alice Sneddon

Abso­lute Mon­ster, guest reviewed by Lena Beets. It’s quite hard to write a review for a com­edy show that has a medi­um to large bomb­shell admis­sion in the middle that changes the con­text of all the jokes told thus far, but I’ll try my best because Alice Snedden’s Abso­lute Mon­ster was great. I’ve been a […]

Review: Space Couch

Tim Batt and Dis­astera­di­o’s Space Couch is a syn­thwave Com­mun­ist talk­show, and I don’t think those words have ever been uttered togeth­er in a sen­tence before. Things go like this. The tit­u­lar pink Space Couch – sent into space by the Sovi­ets in the mid-70s – has fallen back to earth and decided to host […]

Review: So You Think You Khandallah

It’s 1982 in New Zea­l­and, a time of Olivia New­ton-John, Lazy Susans and brick mobile phones, and the stu­dents of the Khan­dal­lah Academy of Per­form­ing Arts are grow­ing their skills, mak­ing friends, and per­haps even find­ing love, all while they try to get a pay­ing per­form­ing arts career. How­ever, things are not quite that easy […]

Review: Snort with Friends

It’s not very easy to review improv, because it changes every night, but Snort with Friends is a very good time. From a series of mono­logues based off audi­ence prompts, the Snort cast (in our case, it was Kura For­res­t­er, Chris Park­er, Bryn­ley Stent, Donna Brook­banks, Rhi­an­non McCall and Tom Sains­bury) plays out a bunch […]

Review: Filthy Little Goblin

Bryn­ley Stent’s 2019 solo show Filthy Little Gob­lin is a bizarre and fant­ast­ic series of eso­ter­ic vign­ettes and I abso­lutely loved it. From birth­day gifts to self-check­­out machines, strange strip per­form­ances and word-based game shows, this absurd­ist show pushes the envel­ope in terms of com­edy and is just very, very fun. Stent has an incred­ible […]

Review: Big Dumb Cats

We are all just big dumb cats, stum­bling around on two legs, expect­ing our feline over­lords to hunt food for us to keep us alive. Daniel John Smith’s Big Dumb Cats is part cat facts, part fam­ily par­able, and all great com­edy with a poignant mes­sage. Smith’s in the midst of an excit­ing office fash­ion […]

Review: Token African (Urzila Carlson)

With a few little obser­va­tions to warm up the crowd, Urz­ila, “does­n’t pick on people,” she says, and rein­forces that she can­’t see any­one in the crowd because of the raised seat­ing at Te Aua­ha’s Tapere Nui theatre. She rolls into talk­ing about Wel­ling­ton, stu­dents, and how nobody in their right mind would ever con­tin­ue […]