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  • Theatre Reviews

    REVIEW: Beneath Skin and Bone (Te Pou)

    [Mana Wahine] Beneath Skin and Bone (BSAB) is set in a world where waiata and music is shunned, and our protagonist Poto (played by Trae Te Wiki) finds herself in a new city, running away [...]
  • Theatre Reviews

    REVIEW: WEiRdO (The Basement)

    [Minority Report] This is an office space where tokenistic cultural gestures are used to tick boxes. Where the line between appropriation and appreciation is blurred. Where microaggressions lurk around every corner. For some people this [...]
  • Theatre Reviews

    REVIEW: The First Time (The Basement)

    [First Foray] It’s the first time The First Time has played in Auckland, and it’s the first play from Wellington playwright Courtney Rose Brown. This season of the show is described as a “mash-up” of [...]
In the Spotlight

REVIEW: 1984 (Auckland Arts Festival)

by James Wenley in Auckland Arts Festival

[1984, Today] The world is having a 1984 moment. The world has always been having a 1984 moment. When Robert Icke and Duncan MacMillan’s stage adaptation premiered in Nottingham in 2013, the backdrop was all about big data and surveillance anxieties. Edward Snowden’s revelations around NSA spying had many turning to George Orwell’s 1984 for literary parallels. Big Brother was watching, privacy was dead. With the dawn of the Trump epoch, the almost 70-year-old novel shot to the top of the bestseller lists. With disputes over inauguration crowd size, and appeals to “alternative facts”, 1984 provided a ready-made narrative to [...]

REVIEW: Here & Now 2018: Tender, You First & Alice (Auckland Theatre Company)

April 21, 2018
[All-Stars] Is the original Shrek (2001) film the ideal model of romance for our times? That’s the theory espoused by Murdoch Keane in Tender, the first of three plays in ATC’s Here & Now Festival playing until Monday. Shrek doesn’t go out looking for love. As an Ogre, it’s not something he ever thought he’d find, never thought he’d be […]

REVIEW: Beneath Skin and Bone (Te Pou)

April 21, 2018
[Mana Wahine] Beneath Skin and Bone (BSAB) is set in a world where waiata and music is shunned, and our protagonist Poto (played by Trae Te Wiki) finds herself in a new city, running away from the constant chatter of her whanau. With a little intervention from the spiritual world, Poto is forced to face her fears, her family’s past […]

REVIEW: WEiRdO (The Basement)

April 21, 2018
[Minority Report] This is an office space where tokenistic cultural gestures are used to tick boxes. Where the line between appropriation and appreciation is blurred. Where microaggressions lurk around every corner. For some people this will never be a concern; for the rest of us, it’s a reality. WEiRdO, created by Waylon Edwards, William Duignan and Jane Yonge, is a […]

REVIEW: Your Heart Looks Like a Vagina (The Basement)

April 17, 2018
[No End in Sight] “It began with a pain in the neck, like I’d slept funny, a joke compared with what’s to come…” Your Heart Looks Like a Vagina is an autobiographical theatre show and a lyrical journey through Dominic “Tourettes” Hoey’s experience with developing and living with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS). AS is a form of arthritis that over time […]

REVIEW: The First Time (The Basement)

April 10, 2018
[First Foray] It’s the first time The First Time has played in Auckland, and it’s the first play from Wellington playwright Courtney Rose Brown. This season of the show is described as a “mash-up” of Brown’s script and director Stef Fink’s experimentation with physical theatre, inspired by her previous work in devising and working with Massive Company. Brown’s script follows […]

REVIEW: Conversations with Dead Relatives (The Basement)

April 5, 2018
[Badly Remembered or Forgotten?] “If you don’t know where you come from, how do you know where you’re going?” — Alex in Conversations Conversations with Dead Relatives is an intimate and heart-warming play written and performed by partners Alex Ellis and Phil Ormsby, and directed by Jennifer Ward-Lealand. Shifting between oral storytelling and dramatic re-enactment, the play begins all the […]

REVIEW: The Basement Tapes (The Basement)

March 31, 2018
[The Haunted Space] A Basement. A room that is a trope in itself. We all know how the scene plays out: one dim light sets a glow upon forgotten objects, lurking shadows creep up the walls at odd angles; we have entered the resting place for the old, unwanted or unused, and it’s the perfect setting for a horror story. […]

REVIEW: Body Double (Silo/Auckland Arts Festival)

March 28, 2018
[Look Again] Desire as an autonomous experience. Now there’s a novel idea. It’s no secret that sexual education across the board is still lacking, whether we’re talking about sexual orientation, contraception, or even basic female anatomy, but something that isn’t often spoken of is a woman’s power to experience and shape her own desire outside of the patriarchal lens. This […]

REVIEW: The Naked Samoans Do Magic (Auckland Arts Festival)

March 24, 2018
[Truly Naked Magic] Although fully clothed at all times, The Naked Samoans are well and truly naked on stage in their latest show – their first together in many years.  They don’t try to hide the fact that they are novices at magic. In fact, it is their bare-all attitude that endears them to the audience. Watching people walk into […]

REVIEW: Us/Them (Auckland Arts Festival)

March 24, 2018
[Nyet] Rarely have I seen a show with such a clear vision that was so completely at odds with the material it was based on. Written and directed by Carly Wijs, Us/Them is a re-telling of the 2004 Beslan school siege from the point of view of the children who experienced it. The early sequences, in which two children (performers […]

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For reviews of theatre playing elsewhere in New Zealand, go to Theatreview.org.nz 

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