REVIEW: Parker & Sainsbury: Giggly Gerties (NZ International Comedy Festival)

April 28, 2018

[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 […]

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: Infectious (Auckland Fringe)

February 25, 2017

[Worth Catching] A man (played by Daryl Wrightson) has unprotected sex with a work colleague. Unbeknownst to him, he has contracted four STDS: Gonorrhea (Zak Enayat), Syphilis (Rebekah Head), Chlamydia (Ash Ogden) and HIV (Tyler Warwick). These STDs are portrayed as a quartet of horny teens on a camping trip. Before they can get comfortable in their new environment, a […]

REVIEW: Close City (The Basement)

September 11, 2016

[A Doll’s Hell] “It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.”― Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel. Like A Doll’s House‘s […]

REVIEW: Camping: Parker and Sainsbury (NZ International Comedy Festival)

April 25, 2016

[Fantastic Foursome] Set in a holiday home where two couples double-book for a honeymoon and an anniversary, the drawing room comedy becomes the primary target for parody in Chris Parker and Thomas Sainsbury’s Camping. It’s like a raunchier version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf with the serious drama cut out. Even the characters feel like grotesque Kiwi versions of […]

REVIEW: Sunday Roast (Silo)

June 9, 2014

Not how you remember it  [by Matt Baker] For her directorial debut as Silo’s Artistic Director, Sophie Roberts has presented both Silo and Q Theatre audiences with a theatrical flavour that will (hopefully) induce a new craving on the palate of Auckland theatregoers. That’s not to say that this production has been chosen simply for its untraditional ingredients, but anyone […]

REVIEW: Vice (The Basement)

April 16, 2014

Perverse [by James Wenley] For the past few weeks, Jordan Mooney has been posting a series of clips promoting a range of different vices. The crazy-eyed front man has whipped himself, walked naked in the wilderness, shoved his face in a toilet bowl, and lit his hair on fire. Turns out these are child plays compared to some of the predilections […]

REVIEW: Zooquatic (The Basement)

November 21, 2013

A fish out of water [by Matt Baker] Having seen the original production of Zooquatic earlier in the year as part of the Short+Sweet Auckland Theatre Festival, I was excited to see in which direction this full-length adaptation would be taken and how much further the parody of the content would be pushed. Absurdist in its comedic style and melodramatic […]

REVIEW: Dolly Mixture (Auckland Fringe)

February 22, 2013

Gross-out Dolly Horror [by James Wenley] Thomas Sainsbury and Yvette Parsons’s previous work together typically tend to features unsavory oddballs, extracting comedy from social awkwardness and character eccentricities. This style is once again at play in Dolly Mixture in which the premise sees Crispin Merriweather (Sainsbury) boarding at the residence of Beverly Beavington (Parsons) who restores dolls as her hobby. But […]

This Week in the Theatre Scene: Make The Basement your new home (18-23 Feb)

February 18, 2013

This Week’s Picks: Black Faggot, Elevator, A Night to Dismember and Dolly Mixture [by James Wenley] Auckland Fringe is out in full force from this week, and audiences are  spoilt for choice, you lucky things you. All of our picks are at The Basement this week, giving you the perfect opportunity to check out their classy new bar area. PICK […]

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