REVIEW: Stutterpop – The Queen’s Speech (Smoke Labours Productions)

August 27, 2015

Stutterly Memorable [by Sharu Delilkan and Tim Booth] The subtitle of the performance “The Queen’s Speech” is an apt description of the show. In many plays there are pivotal, poignant and powerful moments that you love or remember. For us it was the honesty and plain spoken humanity of the whole evening that will make it memorable, when all those […]

Scene by James: The Death of New Work

August 24, 2015

Jack Hartnett and Not Psycho are two new works to debut as part of Q Presents this year that are ambitious, theatrically exciting, yet narratively-flawed works. In the first of a new series of occasional blogs giving his perspective of the Theatre Scenes in Auckland, Theatre Scenes Editor James Wenley asks if we are doing enough to ensure works like these have […]

REVIEW: Loving Kurt Vonnegut (The Basement)

August 23, 2015

The Bourgeois and The Beautiful [by Jess Holly Bates] It’s the middle-class girl in me that loves the set of this play the moment I sit down: the blonde wood of the stage boards, the stark clarity of three white doors, and the the central divan, draped with shagpile. Everything is like the display bedroom in a linen store, down to […]

REVIEW: Sweet Phoebe (The Basement)

August 19, 2015

Sour Aftertaste [by Matt Baker] In the split second between the first mention of the titular Phoebe and the reveal of who she is, there is a glimmer of hope in Michael Gow’s script, but, like the rest of the play, the moment, and the opportunity, is lost to make way for pseudo-dramatic conflict and life-changing subplots, the latter of which […]

REVIEW: Not Psycho (Fractious Tash)

August 16, 2015

Expect the unexpected [by Sharu Delilkan and Tim Booth] A Benjamin Henson show is always distinctly and recognisably his, and Not Psycho is no exception. I must admit that each time I see a Henson play I realise more and more that his creative mind is that of an evil genius. Having seen his most recently creation Ghastly Dash Grimm: […]

REVIEW: Between Two Waves (Auckland Live)

August 7, 2015

Dramatic Collapse [by Jess Holly Bates] It is a dizzy experience, on the steep rake of the Herald seating block. It always takes a moment to re-adjust. From my high angle I can see a single man on a couch, on a stage, and his tale will be no less giddy than my perch. He is earnestly polar fleeced and stumbling […]

REVIEW: Lysistrata (Auckland Theatre Company)

August 4, 2015

Make love… and theatre… not war [by Matt Baker] The serendipity of coming across the fourth entry in this Cracked article today was not lost on me. Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata over 2,400 years ago and, according to the opening night audience, dick jokes are just as funny now as they were then, and if there is one person in New Zealand […]