REVIEW: The Pianist (Auckland Live)

April 12, 2015

Bravura Recital [by Amanda Leo] As a child, my parents very occasionally took me to the circus as a type of rare treat, which has resulted in much anticipation when going to watch any type of circus  act in my adult life. My anticipation of a night full of magic wasn’t disappointed as I arrived at the foyer of the Hearld […]

REVIEW: Beards! Beards! Beards! (Trick of the Light)

April 9, 2015

Beardiful [by Amanda Leo] With a piece entitled Beards! Beards! Beards!, I had no doubt that theatre-watching beard-enthusiasts were going to enjoy this show about, well, a girl trying to grow a beard. I’m not exactly what you’d call an avid beard-enthusiast myself, but this show had me questioning why I wasn’t one. We are greeted with a beautiful simple layout […]

REVIEW: This is our Youth (The Basement)

April 9, 2015

Escape from New York  [by Tim George] Directed by Benjamin Henson, this new revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s pressure cooker of disaffected youth in Reagan-era New York is by turns claustrophobic, bleak, and nihilistic. It is also blackly comic and surprisingly profound. A young man steals $15000 from his father and holes up with his only friend, who also happens to be […]

REVIEW: Breath, Three Samuel Beckett Works (Q Vault)

April 9, 2015

Life is Krapp [by James Wenley] It is tempting to interpret Breath as an encapsulation of the ultimate message of all of Samuel Beckett’s plays: you’re born, life is rubbish, you die, and then it happens again to someone else. Breath is all of 40 seconds. Spoiler alert: we hear a baby’s cry, the lights fade up as we hear the […]

REVIEW: Fold (The Basement)

April 1, 2015

Fold again [by Matt Baker] There are certain recurring words associated with Jo Randerson’s writing: witty, refreshing, grotesque, absurd, surreal, irreverent; but it is only these last two I would attribute to her first play, Fold, which is currently playing in The Basement Studio. Its self-proclaimed “…mockery of pretension, self-obsession, and self-delusion…” is nothing more than that, a mockery, and while […]

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