[Basic Instincts] I put my hand up to review this show based solely on the poster: A snarling woman puking Black bile while her eyes scream bloody murder. Sold. The moment actress Acacia O’Connor was screaming at me in German while covered in black war paint and pouring wine into an imaginary glass, I think this might be my favourite […]
[Will The Simpsons Save the World?] This play reminds of a fantasy David Mamet told in one of his books about working in Hollywood. If the apocalypse ever happened, he could make a living telling stories around the campfire, while the studio executives he worked for would starve to death. The power of storytelling to act as a vehicle for […]
[Responsibility – The Musical!] Conceived and performed by Rebekah Head and Jess Brian, Unsupervised is part cabaret, part Muppets/Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood skit. The title refers to the performers’ relationship with adulthood and hence being ‘unsupervised’ in their lives. Bracketed by songs (topics include bringing down the patriarchy and a killer parody of yoof-centric sex ed presentations), Head and Brian talk about […]
[Do Toasters Dream of Electric Loaves?] A free-form look at the (dis)respectable tradition of women created by men – from Pygmalion to that creepy sexbot of Scarlett Johansson that somebody built in their parents’ basement – Future’s Eve is a lot to process. There are so many ideas and tones at work in Michelle Aitken’s one-fembot show: sentient toasters, the […]
[Me, Myself and I (Will Jones)] If you are familiar with the Auckland theatre scene (drink!), the Basement Theatre is the most exciting place to check out. Sometimes Q will get some braingasm of absurdity like Frank the Mind-Reading Hot Dog on one of its smaller stages, but generally if you want something more lo-fi and harder to categorise, The […]
[Easy Living] There have been many strange and idiosyncratic characters to visit The Basement Studio. The latest occupant is the karaoke and sex-crazed septuagenarian, Marge. Written and performed by Hamish McGregor, Marge is a narcissist who loves to hold court and dish on her rise from sex-crazed groupie to… sex-crazed hairdresser. If you are a fan of eighties power ballads, and […]
[Winning Bet] Performed by John Burrows and directed by Jennifer Ward-Lealand, A Gambler’s Guide to Dying is a tribute to the powers of story-telling – to inflate, immortalise and inspire. Written by Gary McNair (who originally performed the solo himself at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe Festival), A Gambler’s Guide to Dying tells the story of a young man and his […]
[Death Becomes Him] Growth. That was my impression of Ashton Brown’s last show, Anxious To Meet You. In that show, Brown exposed himself in a highly autobiographical (and occasionally uncomfortable) meditation on mental illness and the importance of self-love. Well that, and stories about explosive diarrhoea, naked karaoke and irrefutable proof that powerpoint presentations are the embodiment of evil. Dying […]
[Heavy Metal Camp] Giggly Gerties is the latest joint from the team of Chris Parker & Thomas Sainsbury. Following the ensemble of their last opus Camping, Giggly Gerties is the team distilled to their essence – two men in leotards on a bare stage jabbering nonsense for 50 minutes. Resting snuggly on the imaginary border between the head spaces of […]
[Nyet] Rarely have I seen a show with such a clear vision that was so completely at odds with the material it was based on. Written and directed by Carly Wijs, Us/Them is a re-telling of the 2004 Beslan school siege from the point of view of the children who experienced it. The early sequences, in which two children (performers […]
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