Review — Oddacity

Odd­ac­i­ty promised an “award-win­n­ing, best-of spec­tac­u­lar with a cast of inter­na­tion­al lumi­nar­ies per­form­ing styl­ish acts”, under the beau­ti­ful sky­light in Bats’ Hey­day Dome.   I was­n’t sure what to expect, know­ing the the­atre would­n’t suit aeri­als or acro­bat­ics, but I hoped  for clowns.  I was not dis­ap­point­ed in that sense. Odd­ac­i­ty is usu­al­ly Sachie Mikawa, Trent […]

Review: DND Live at the Fringe: When Dwarves Cry

I would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly say that Dun­geons and Drag­ons has gone main­stream, but it’s become a lot more pop­u­lar in the last twen­ty years.  It prob­a­bly helps that there are so many TV shows these days with a fan­ta­sy ele­ment, as well as movies like the Lord of the Rings series mak­ing sword-and-sor­cery stuff cool­er. DnD […]

Review: Dr Drama Makes a Show

It was weird for me to go to a show at 93 Kel­burn Parade, hav­ing com­plet­ed my own hum­ble BA at Vic almost 20 years ago.  In fact, #93 was the site of at least one audi­tion and more than a few rehearsals for me.  It’s had a bit of a facelift, now being an […]

Four Nights In the Green Barrow Pub — Review

Four Nights In the Green Bar­row Pub is the third of Cas­san­dra Tse’s shows I’ve seen, and each one was wild­ly dif­fer­ent from the oth­ers.  M’La­dy had me in stitch­es, The Aliens, in tears.  Four Nights, though, took me down mem­o­ry lane. Hav­ing a hun­dred noisy musi­cal Irish cousins of my own, I was prob­a­bly […]

Review: Hamlet (Summer Shakespeare 2019)

Sum­mer Shake­speare’s Ham­let has been a show I’ve been look­ing for­ward to for a very long time, and I can def­i­nite­ly say that it did­n’t let me down. Direct­ed by David O’Don­nell, and star­ring Ste­vie Han­­cox-Monk as a female Ham­let, the show brought Ham­let back to life for me in a very good way. Ham­let is a fan­tas­tic play but […]

Review: Actual Fact

Reviewed by our fan­tas­tic guest review­er, Shan­non Gillies (@dashright­in) on Twit­ter! The audi­ence arrived warm and will­ing to be enter­tained — and they were. Actu­al Fact explored sto­ry telling. Not in a way that is gen­er­al­ly cel­e­brat­ed in our soci­ety — such as I’m an adven­tur­er, sportsper­son, a politi­cian — lis­ten to or read of […]

Review: (A Smidge of) Pidge

I’m not entire­ly sure how to describe this show. Part cos­­tumed-won­der, part avant-garde art piece, (A Smidge of) Pidge is a black com­e­dy about iden­ti­ty and anx­i­ety and pigeons. I think. Sher­ilee Kahui dances about BATS’ Pro­peller Stage for an hour dressed in an elab­o­rate pigeon cos­tume. She drinks wine, shares gin­ger­nuts, and recre­ates an icon­ic scene from Love […]

Review: The Don

Lust, Mur­der and Revenge.  The Don is a bas­tardiza­tion of Don Gio­van­ni, and I mean that in a very good way. One man, accom­pa­nied by a musi­cian, sev­er­al films, and a pup­pet, aims to recre­ate the entire­ty of Mozart’s Don Gio­van­ni in just under an hour and thor­ough­ly suc­ceeds. This show is an hour of glo­ri­ous mani­cism, of many, many accents, and of […]

Theatre Review: Destination Beehive: 2017

You pos­si­bly couldn’t get more Welling­ton than head­ing to the the­atre, regard­less of the weath­er, to watch a musi­cal about pol­i­tics. Last week, I went along to Des­ti­na­tion Bee­hive: 2017, writ­ten by the clever and wit­ty duo of Lorae Par­ry and Pinky Agnew. The seat of Tinako­ri Heights is high­ly con­tend­ed this elec­tion as every […]

Review: Onstage Dating

In the age of ‘swip­ing right’ and ‘real­i­ty’ dat­ing shows, the con­cept of live onstage dat­ing by far pro­vides more enter­tain­ment. Bron Bat­ten so bril­liant­ly proved this on her open­ing night of Onstage Dat­ing. In this show, there’s no oppor­tu­ni­ty to accept or reject based on appear­ances and no pro­duc­ers or edi­tors decid­ing on the […]