Review: End of the Rainbow

Judy’s return some­thing to talk about By Talia Carl­isle Pour the cham­pagne because Judy Gar­land has come to town. Peter Quilter’s smash hit show End of the Rain­bow opened to loud belly laughs, big smiles and plenty of cheers at the Wel­ling­ton Opera House this week­end. While the audi­ence and stars were dressed to impress, […]

Review: Cabaret de Paris

I’ve had Art vs Sci­ence’s song Par­lez-Vous Fran­cais stuck in my head for two days because of this show and I’m not even a little ashamed to admit it. The Cab­aret de Par­is is a glor­i­ous dis­play of joy, sequins and (per­haps) tit­il­la­tion, and I had a very good time. Com­bin­ing show­girl glam­our, singing, illu­sion­ists and fab­ulous dan­cers […]

Review: The Elixir of Love

Friends, plough­men and coun­try­men, you’re invited to the Elixir of Love, NZ Opera’s utterly mad­cap new cre­ation. Though my com­pan­ion and I were likely the young­est and the poorest in the audi­ence (opera con­tin­ues to be an art form seem­ingly gran­ted to those above a cer­tain age), it was a show that could be enjoyed […]

Review: That Bloody Woman

Kate Shep­pard, “the lead­ing light of the New Zea­l­and women’s suf­frage move­ment” tells her story in this rock music­al by Luke Di Somma and Gregory Cooper. Dir­ec­ted by Kip Chap­man, (with Jen­nifer Ward-Lea­l­and this season’s Rehears­al Dir­ect­or) the show is ter­rif­ic.  All the ele­ments of the best music­als are here – a well con­struc­ted dra­mat­ic […]

Evita

If you sus­pect that I’m not an actu­al, fully qual­i­fied review­er, you’d be cor­rect. How­ever, in this par­tic­u­lar instance, I feel I have some expert­ise hav­ing watched the movie Evita, star­ring my pal Madonna. Armed with this extens­ive know­ledge, and hav­ing wiki­pe­di­aed Eva Per­on (did you know Juan Per­on popped her corpse in his din­ing room 20 years after […]