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 […]