REVIEW: Wicked (The Civic) [The Girl from Kansas Edition]

September 23, 2013

A Wicked Night Out [by Sharu Delilkan] Theatre Scenes Reviewers Sharu Delilkan and James Wenley both went to opening night of Wicked. This was the first time Sharu has seen Wicked, and she writes as a Wicked first-timer, a girl from Kansas on her first trip to Oz. We knew we were in for an awesome spectacle as we approached […]

REVIEW: Birds (The Basement)

September 18, 2013

Flight over fancy [by Matt Baker] I was disappointed to hear that Dianna Fuemana’s play Birds lost funding halfway through rehearsals. I wasn’t surprised, as it wasn’t the only negative funding news I had heard yesterday (am I right?), but to reiterate, I was disappointed. New Zealand is a melting pot of Asian and Pacific culture, and, as Black Faggot and Goodbye My Feleni confirmed earlier […]

REVIEW: Kiss the Fish (Indian Ink Theatre Company)

September 15, 2013

A fish worth kissing [by Sharu Delilkan] The foyer of Q Theatre was like a Who’s Who of Auckland’s theatre industry last night – alive with anticipation of Indian Ink Theatre Company’s opening night of Kiss the Fish. Just like the masks that are used in the majority of Indian Ink’s shows, where no two are alike, we knew we […]

REVIEW: Gwen in Purgatory (Twist Productions)

September 13, 2013

Family dynamics deftly depicted [by Sharu Delilkan] Rachael Walker’s seemingly simple set for Gwen in Purgatory belies the emerging complexity of interaction between a rich tapestry of family members doing their best [or worst] for their elderly mother or grandparent. The show shines the spotlight on the tough and awkward issues that many of of us go through life avoiding. […]

REVIEW: Abigail’s Party (Vibracorp Productions)

September 11, 2013

Keep Calm and Party On [by James Wenley] The promotional blurb has boldly led with the Channel 4 Quote that Abigail’s Party by Mike Leigh is the “most painful hundred minutes of British comedy”. You can understand why. The guests of the party are hardly the type of people you’d otherwise willingly want to spend that amount of time with. […]

REVIEW: Looking At Stuff in Clouds (Playfight Productions)

September 10, 2013

One way of passing time [by Matt Baker] Less a play and more a series of vignettes, the fourth production by Playfight, written and performed by co-founders Shoshana McCallum and Donna Brookbanks, is a self-proclaimed thought provoking commentary on the human condition in the naughties. Said commentary is broken, however, between the nine aforementioned vignettes, and consequently offers little insight […]

REVIEW: Lord of the Flies (Auckland Theatre Company)

September 8, 2013

Boys own Apocalypse [by James Wenley] Auckland Theatre Company’s stage production makes a nod to the usual medium the Lord of the Flies story is inherited: the secondary school classroom. A bookend, invented by Director Colin McColl and his cast, sets the leads as contemporary high-school students encountering William Golding’s 1954 novel. Project artwork of various pig heads, beasts and […]

REVIEW: Yeti Trilogy (Moving Theatre Company)

September 4, 2013

Far from abominable [by Matt Baker] Love, lust, manipulation, jealously, and revenge are the key ingredients of any great melodrama, and no Auckland based theatrical melodrama has proved so great as The Moving Theatre Company’s Yeti Trilogy. Encompassing original productions Dan Is Dead: I Am Yeti and Yeti Is Dead: I Am Tom, the Yeti Trilogy incorporates a third act, Yeti In The Himalayas, to create a […]

REVIEW: After Miss Julie (One Lonely Goat)

August 28, 2013

A touch of class [by Sharu Delilkan] Coming to see Patrick Marber’s play After Miss Julie was an experience in itself. Right from the get-go it was obvious that the producers of the show had taken a lot of care to ensure that the audience were going to be taken care of. I say this because it is seldom that […]

WEST END BOY: Theatre Scenes goes to London, Part Three

August 27, 2013

Lost in London: The Drowned Man [by James Wenley] Theatre has a tendency to interrogate its own relevance. Every so often there is a new grand declaration that theatre is dying, maybe even already dead. We need new forms cry the Konstantins, though the basic narratives have remained the same since the ancients.  Against competing entertaining options and greying audiences, […]

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