Back when I was a callow youth, I once spent a magical summer backstage of Takapuna’s Pumphouse Theatre, working Tim Bray’s The Santa Claus Show. I had just finished my first year of uni, and this was my first proper professional theatre gig. I was the assistant stage manager. Truth be told, back then I would rather have been onstage […]
Two couples, one double-booked Airbnb — it’s a modern-day nightmare that usually spirals into awkward pleasantries or passive-aggressive remarks. But throw Kura Forrester, Chris Parker, Tom Sainsbury, and Brynley Stent into the mix, and you get Camping: a chaotic, hilarious cocktail of absurdity and brilliance. First conceived in the 2016 Comedy Festival as a one-hour Basement Theatre show Camping has […]
Mansplain it to me There’s something remarkable about a show returning to Q Theatre three times in a single year, so I was eager to finally catch H.R. The Musical in this short season. As someone with a decade of experience in the tech industry, I’ve been shaped by the influence of HR — from onboarding and exit interviews to […]
Freya Silas Finch’s one-hour solo show leaves me feeling acutely aware of my own gender — like a bandaid I want to tear away yet can’t quite remove despite persistent efforts to pry it off. At the start of A Slow Burlesque Finch addresses the audience: “You’ll be walking down the street five years later, see a man with a […]
[Presented by Tawata Productions] Ngā Rorirori is an energetic and expansive farce, which explores interpersonal relationships and individual attitudes to treatment of whenua; through an impressive emulsion of dance, theatre, and song. The play follows Pillow and Manuela Rorirori, a brother and sister. Manuela is an activist and organisational wiz, while Pillow is a convicted fraudster and smooth talker. They […]
[Presented by Te Pou Theatre and New Zealand Opera] It was a pleasure to attend Tōiri, a showcase of Aotearoa’s rising opera stars, hosted by the enigmatic Kawiti Waetford. The evening featured renditions of operatic greats, from Verdi and Puccini to Bizet. The twist — everything was performed in te reo Māori. There were stunning performances by Te Ohorere Williams, […]
Māori Krishna + AltarNative is an enchanting and educational double-bill of semi-autobiographical solo performance pieces. Despite being insular and episodic, the two constituent pieces are linked by shared themes and subject matter. This connection between pieces is cemented by the audience’s involvement in the pack-away and set-up between shows, and the lack of break in performance between the pieces. The […]
A show about that time at 3 am when you cannot sleep and end up fixating on how you ended up at this stage of your life, Our Own Little Mess is amazing. And incredibly depressing. And funny! And terrifying! Sometimes at the same time! The power of theatre! Maybe it speaks to my own subjectivity but I was completely in sync […]
[Let other pens dwell on misery] It is on an inclement Sunday evening that the New Zealand Opera invited audience members to brave the long drive up to Settlers Country Manor, some 10 minutes from Kumeū. Originally a dairy factory, the ‘Manor’ is now a lavish wedding venue, and, between the smoke hanging in the air and the plentiful dark […]
No Time to Wait Basement Theatre’s Studio is so tightly packed with eager audience members before the premiere of playwright and director Lucy Dawber’s latest comedic offering No Time to Dry, that a Basement staff member ends up giving their seat to the final person to enter the room. There’s an anticipation in the air that I’ve rarely experienced like […]
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