REVIEW: The Biggest (Auckland Arts Festival)

March 14, 2017

[Touching Masculinity] Writer and director Jamie McCaskill has a knack for capturing the way real people speak, whether it’s the inhabitants of a woman’s refuge (Not in Our Neighbourhood) or a men’s prison (Manawa). In The Biggest, McCaskill turns his ears to the older Kiwi male. You know the one, the classic bloke, often reduced to a simple stereotype. Set […]

REVIEW: Othello (Pop-up Globe)

March 12, 2017

[All About Iago] The problematic racial politics of Othello are scrutinised for a good reason. You have a play that centers around a dark-skinned man being tricked by, typically, a light-skinned man, into killing his white wife. So, looking at it as a modern audience, is it an examination of otherness or a perpetuation of it? Director Ben Naylor’s production […]

REVIEW: Flesh of the Gods (Auckland Fringe)

March 10, 2017

[Raw Meat] Entering a show with a certain set of expectations is never ideal. Those who saw Pressure Point Collective’s Potato Stamp Megalomaniac last year were treated to a playful retelling of a manic episode that was both honest and theatrically inventive. While plenty of innovative and unexpected devices were used to tell the story, they always adhered to a […]

REVIEW: Power Ballad (Auckland Fringe)

March 9, 2017

[Language Games] Julia Croft’s If There’s Not Dancing at the Revolution, Then I’m Not Coming used feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey as the jumping off point for a riotous deconstruction of female representation in our popular media. It put those common tropes we often take for granted under a critical lens and scrutinised the hell out of them, all while […]

REVIEW: As You Like It (Summer Shakespeare)

March 1, 2017

[That’s the Way I Like It] It’s refreshing to return to the Auckland University Clock Tower space for Summer Shakespeare this year. Despite the excitement of the Pop-Up Globe, there was always a level of intimacy sacrificed in the massive space. There some productions were often at the mercy of the venue, servicing the stage rather than the script. Here the […]

REVIEW: “Ze”: Queer As Fuck! (Auckland Pride/Fringe)

February 23, 2017

[Cumming of Age] Queer revolution is the name of the game in “Ze”: Queer as Fuck!, a deeply personal one-person show that explores the vast depths of identity politics. It’s a show deliberately designed to appeal to those who identify with an anti-assimilation, non-conformist attitude. But, more than simply agitprop, everything is backed up by personal anecdotes and experience. Beginning […]

REVIEW: Spirit House (Auckland Fringe)

February 22, 2017

[Ghost in the Shell] Frequent collaborators Carl Bland and Ben Crowder join forces once again, co-directing Bland’s latest play Spirit House. Not unlike their previous work Te Pō, a mystery drives the narrative. But, where in that play the stakes and plot hinged on the metatheatrical, Spirit House centers on the metaphysical. Two men, situated in the same art studio […]

REVIEW: deVINE (The Basement)

February 9, 2017

[Twisted Sisters] The Ancient Greeks understood the disastrous ripple effect that our ancestors have on us, psychic trauma running through every branch of the family tree. And while the age of Ancient Greek Tragedy is over, the family drama continues to reign as a theatre staple for a good reason. It’s just like that Philip Larkin’s famous poem goes: “They […]

REVIEW: The Beautiful Ones (Tawata Productions)

November 23, 2016

[Slice of Nightlife] Born from writer and director Hone Kouka’s own experiences as part of the 90s dance party scene in Amsterdam, The Beautiful Ones is a multi-disciplinary love letter presented by Maori and Cook Islands theatre company Tawata Productions. By transplanting this nostalgia for a lost time to a present day Wellington setting, the homage becomes a platform to […]

REVIEW: Perplex (Silo)

November 17, 2016

[This is a Review] Nic (Nic Sampson) and Natalie (Natalie Medlock) return from a holiday to find their home not quite in the same state they left it. Their friends, another couple, Sam (Sam Snedden) and Kura (Kura Forrester) have been housesitting. It begins by establishing a premise that echoes many others, but soon derails off course. While the domestic […]

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