PREVIEW: NZ International Comedy Festival: Week Two

May 14, 2019

Matt Baker’s back with highlights from week one of the Comedy Festival and his picks for week two Week one of the 2019 NZ International Comedy Fest saw winner of the 2018 Auckland Theatre Excellence Award-winner Leon Wadham follow up his debut hit Giddy, with Funk, an absurd literal and metaphorical journey of self-discovery, which once again blew audiences away. […]

REVIEW: NZ International Comedy Festival Preview Week

May 7, 2019

Matt Baker reports on the early highlights from this year’s Comedy Festival If the Best Foods Comedy Gala is any indication of what the year has to offer, 2019 looks to be a great year for the New Zealand International Comedy Festival. Winner of the 2018 Best International Guest, Rhys Nicholson is the perfect host for the two-and-half hour plus […]

REVIEW: HeadSand (Fractious Tash)

March 29, 2019

[You Can’t Ignore It] Director Benjamin Henson has a particular knack for creating worlds. Since co-founding Fractious Tash in 2012, his astute interpretations of classic texts, and dramaturgical practice in company-devised works, have provided New Zealand audiences with ingenious imagery that is as unpredictable, and more often than not shocking, as it is apt. While his work as a director […]

REVIEW: The Dreamer (Auckland Arts Festival)

March 27, 2019

[Sleep Cycle] I was once told that writing a review is like trying to explain a dream. From symbols and metaphors to narratives and character, the craft of dissecting the sub-textual subtlety of art is not unlike articulating the intangible process of the unconscious mind. How ideas, whether conscious or not, are delivered and interpreted are as vital to their […]

REVIEW: The Space Between (Auckland Fringe)

February 27, 2019

[Getting Closer] What is connection? It’s one of the many questions stuck to the black curtains of the central playing space of the Town Hall Supper Room, and a provocation in the devising process of The Space Between, a multi-space, multi-disciplinary theatrical installation presented by Cherie Moore and Sheena Irving in the 2019 Auckland Fringe Festival. Connection is one of […]

REVIEW: Aladdin – The Musical (The Civic)

January 12, 2019

[Putting Agrabah on the Map] Whether recognised from its Chinese origin or by Robin Williams’ signature improvisational skills, the story of Aladdin is by no means new to the international literary or dramatic canon. The pauper-to-prince protagonist plot, antagonised by an evil sorcerer, is a staple narrative in not only its multiple adaptations, but also the varying interpretations of the […]

REVIEW: Shortland Street – The Musical (Auckland Theatre Company)

December 1, 2018

[Make No Bones About It] The question of whether the result of Shortland Street the television series can be considered successful need only be measured by one fact: 26 years. But with new mediums come new risks. For every The Lion King and The Producers stage musical adaptation there is a Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and The Fly. Fortunately, Shortland […]

REVIEW: Such Stuff as Dreams (Basement Theatre)

November 8, 2018

[Half asleep] Presented by Dusty Room Productions, Such Stuff as Dreams, by Camilla Walker, advertises itself as a love story between Claire, a “wanderlusting waitress”, and Alfie, a busker with schizophrenia, played by Catherine Yates and Tyler Wilson Kokiri respectively. Mental health is a common theme in New Zealand theatre, and such theatrical representations require not only a deft hand, but […]

REVIEW: SIBS (The Basement)

August 9, 2018

[O Sibling, Where Art Thou?] The concept of sibling rivalry dates as far back through history as Romulus and Remus (750 BC), and the conflict it produces has been the subject of theatrical narratives from Shakespeare’s King Lear (c. 1606) to Jess Sayer’s Wings (2013). A meta-theatrical, autobiographical comedy, SIBS presents Chris Parker, an award-winning actor and comedian with a […]

1 2 3 16