Real Lives, Real Theatre. Theatre, in many ways, is all about being what you are not. Actors research and rehearse hard in order to embody characters that are nothing like them, playwrights write ‘fictional’ stories… all in the hope of being able to portray some sort of ‘truth’ onstage. It was revelatory and refreshing last night to see Homeless Economics, […]
Anywhere but Shady Meadows! There is something very disconcerting watching Isla Adamson and Josephine Stewart -Tewhiu play elderly characters in their devised Fringe play Chalk. These gorgeous young performers transform and contract their bodies in such a believable way that the characters have a sense of the uncanny. Welcome to Shady Meadows Retirement home. A commercial voice over tells us […]
Toga Party. Constantinople is a famous city founded by the Emperor Constantine in 330BC, but had its name changed to Istanbul in 1930. Actor Barnie Duncan (Outrageous Fortune) liked its name better the first time. He uses the city as a name for his ‘soloish’ play and a very lose framework to experiment with some absurd gags, and to play some […]
No, not that Anne Hathaway. Shakespeare is perched today on the highest of pedestals in the Western literary world. Apart from those odd rumours that Shakespeare is really somebody else (because somebody with just a Grammar School education could never write like that, don’t you know)… his works are gloried, written about and staged over and over again as if […]
Romeo & Juliet. Antony & Cleopatra…. Joseph & Mahina? I’ve written about Thomas Sainsbury plays many times before in Craccum Magazine. He’s something of a modern kiwi Shakespeare type, dominating Auckland over the last several years with a huge output of low budget but manically funny. Like Shakespeare he sometimes acts in his plays too and he directs most of […]
Deep Sea Theatre Magic The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer is a very special show. Using live performance, wonderful cartoon animation, and simple puppetry, the show’s creator and performer Tim Watts keeps the audience enthralled for 45minutes. I can see why the show has been compared to Pixar: like UP, within the first minutes there is an […]
I found this play to be funny Pity the struggling actor. In order to support themselves when work runs dry, they must take a serious of unholy jobs until the day Peter Jackson rings out of the blue with a film offer. The ‘comic triumvirate’ behind Feel Felt Found – Ryan Richards, Nic Sampson and Barnaby Fedric must have experienced […]
Tim Watts gives an in-depth interview. Literally. The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer is set in a (not so?) fictional future where the seas have risen and billions of people have died. For the few that remain, they must look to the oceans for the continued survival of the human race. Alvin Sputnik, who is brought to life […]
A beautiful and stupid comedy from Australia… The Hermitude of Angus, Ecstatic sounds nothing like your typical comedy show. Billed as a ‘read along comedy’, it’s a fusion of comedy, dance, music, clowning… and philosophy. Created by Slow Clap productions’ Vachel Spirason and Stephanie Brotchie, it won ‘Best Comedy’ at its Melbourne Fringe Festival debut last year, and crosses the […]
Ice-cream is apparently one of the most searched for terms on the internet. Who knew? There’s certainly something about the stuff that makes people happy. On arrival at the Basement for ‘I won’t be happy until I lose one of my limbs’ we were presented with a free ice-cream cone. This made me happy. What a clever way to make […]
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