REVIEW: A Brisk Wind Whistling Down Twin Oak Drive (The Basement)

March 22, 2018

[Fun ’n’ Head Games] Created and performed by Phoebe Mason, A Brisk Wind Whistling Down Twin Oak Drive falls somewhere between one-person show and a Choose Your Own Adventure. The story (if one can call it that) starts out simply enough – our unknown protagonist wanders onto the titular street and finds themselves inside a strange house that feels oddly familiar. In the […]

REVIEW: Judge, Jury & Cookie Monster (Auckland Fringe)

March 1, 2018

[Anatomy of a Biscuit] So, who did steal the cookie from the cookie jar? Proof that the worst pitches can still make great shows, John Burrows’s Judge, Jury & Cookie Monster initially comes across as a dare. ‘You wanna see a REAL Fringe show?’ Starring Kirsty Bruce, Courtney Eggleton, Lucas Haugh, Will Moffatt, Sneha Shetty, Kyle Shields and an unsuspecting […]

REVIEW: Mackenzie’s Daughters (Auckland Fringe)

February 26, 2018

[A Bale of Laughs] This show is basically the inverse of my review’s lame title – it’s funny, it’s inane, it’s utterly ridiculous, and no part of it makes you wince. Completely improvised on the spot, Mackenzie’s Daughters is something: a chance to watch some of Auckland’s best performers try to keep up with each other. Featuring a revolving cast (my night featured Donna Brookbanks, […]

REVIEW: The Jenny Taylor Show (Auckland Fringe)

February 24, 2018

[Jeremy Kyle rest easy] A live taping of a talk show is a solid theatrical idea, but The Jenny Taylor Show does not take this much beyond its premise. The main problem is a lack of focus. It is meant to be a satire about talk shows, but it what is it commenting on? Could it be the blurring of reality […]

REVIEW: Macbeth (Pop-up Globe)

February 11, 2018

[Fresh Daggers in Familiar Smiles] Directed by Tom Mallaburn, the Pop-up Globe’s production of Macbeth is mostly a traditional take on the material. I say mostly, because the show’s creators make one interesting addition right at the top which causes ripples throughout the rest of the show. There has always been a theory that the Macbeth’s had lost a child [Lady Macbeth […]

REVIEW: Gays in Space (Auckland Pride)

February 9, 2018

[Home-grown Homo-Futurism] If you have seen the poster for this – heck, if you read the title – you know what you are in for. Written by Thomas Sainsbury and Jason Smith, Gays in Space is the tale of a group of gay astronauts handpicked by NASA to explore the surface of Uranus. After that the plot gets really complicated, […]

REVIEW: Two Hearts: Auckland World Tour (NZ Music Theatre Company)

December 15, 2017

[Half-Hearted] Following a successful run at this year’s New Zealand Comedy Festival, Laura Daniel and Joseph Moore have brought their hit musical comedy Two Hearts back for another season. Maybe it’s a sign of my accelerating decrepitude, but for about the first half of the show I was not really feeling this one. And it has a lot to do with the […]

REVIEW: Björk: All is Full of Love (The Blackbird Ensemble)

November 10, 2017

[What the Bjork] The latest project from Blackbird Ensemble, Björk: All is Full of Love is a musical tribute that never feels like it. Featuring a revolving line-up of guest vocalists (Jessie Cassin, Anna Coddington, TEEKS and Sarah Belkner), the Ensemble have crafted a self-contained project that re-contextualises Bjork’s music around the underlying theme of the track the project is […]

REVIEW: Finding Temeraire (The Basement)

October 18, 2017

[A Ghost Story] Written and directed by Stanley Makuwe, Finding Temeraire is an extremely dark and disturbing look at the debris of a relationship, but its most incisive critique is left unsaid. The play is a two-hander about Primrose (Sandra Zvenyika), who returns home after a long prison sentence for killing her child, intent on confronting the man, Temeraire (Tawanda […]

REVIEW: Velvet (Auckland Live International Cabaret Season)

September 25, 2017

[Everybody Dance!] This show is awesome, this show is great, this show made me want dance like a loon. So much of my love for this show boils down to two things. The first is the totally awesome soundtrack, jam-packed with disco classics, from Chic’s ‘Le Freak’ to Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ and The Tramps’ ‘Disco Inferno’. The second […]

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