REVIEW: 48 Nights on Hope Street (Auckland Theatre Company)

September 17, 2020

[Hope abounds, the theatre is alive] 48 Nights on Hope Street is a triumphant addition to an anthological tradition.  Drawing on Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, Auckland Theatre Company has brought together the works of five talented young writers, Freya Daly Sadgrove, Leki Jackson-Bourke, Nathan Joe, Ana Scotney, and Cian Elyse White.  Set during the Black Death epidemic, the Decameron is a story cycle […]

STREAMING REVIEW: Change Your Own Life (BATS Theatre)

June 14, 2020

[Potent in Any Medium] Jean Sergent’s solo show returns from Fringe to the stage and your nearest screen. Change Your Own Life is a guide to navigating where the body, immense love, and overwhelming grief intersect.  With the lockdown and social distancing closing theatres and keeping audiences apart since March, transitioning to an online platform has become a popular alternative […]

REVIEW: Limbo Unhinged (Auckland Arts Festival)

March 14, 2020

[Unhinged Limbs] Billed as circus-cabaret, Limbo Unhinged offers terrifying spectacles and exhilarating feats of strength and physical control. A mixture of dance, clowning, and acrobatics (including fire breathing and sword swallowing), combined with live music, the show has much to offer. The Auckland Art’s Festival Spiegeltent which pops up in Aotea Square provides the perfect venue for this display. Rich […]

REVIEW: Get out of my Letterbox (Auckland Fringe)

February 20, 2020

[Theatre Time is different to Earth Time] Two women, a silver survey machine with the power to turn back time, dozens of bananas, and a pair of letterboxes are the difference between knowing who you think you are and finding out you are a quarter Costa Rican. Get Out of My Letter Box builds a world of wild imagination, subterfuge, […]

REVIEW: An Organ of Soft Tissue (Basement Theatre)

November 6, 2019

[Continuing the #MeToo Conversation] Responding to the #MeToo movement, An Organ of Soft Tissue continues the conversation around perceptions of trauma, sexuality, and gender with an exploration of memory, identity, and sexual politics. At times this show cuts very close to home, the eyes of some audience members glittering with pain and recognition. A pre-show announcement has invited us to […]

REVIEW: Green Day’s American Idiot: The Musical (The Civic)

October 12, 2019

[Still feeling the angst 15 years on] An American musical, an English cast, a Kiwi audience: can the early 2000s hit pop-punk band Green Day deliver a musical that crosses both time and culture? Drawn from the 2004 rock-opera style album American Idiot which responded to American anxiety following 9/11, the public divide over the Iraq war, and the Bush […]

REVIEW: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Auckland Theatre Company)

September 17, 2019

[Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Funny] A chime is heard and backstage is onstage. The curtain has revealed an actors’ waiting room. Three plywood walls, a roll of green screen, a ladder leading nowhere, and a healthy scattering of exit signs, ominously glowing without their promised exits. Scaffolding is visible and there is a lighting bar lying across the back […]

REVIEW: I Didn’t Invite You Here to Lecture Me (Basement Theatre)

September 11, 2019

[Complete Education in 60 Minutes] What is the measurement used to gauge the success of a piece of theatre? Whether you laugh? Whether you are challenged into action? Is it measured by achieving the perfect level of audience participation, or by how skilled and flexible the actor is? Perhaps the yardstick is how many levels the script can operate on […]

REVIEW: The Blind Date Project (Silo Theatre)

August 30, 2019

[Swipe Right and Swipe Right Again] Improvisational theatre, ephemeral at best, becomes completely sui generis when you have a new guest performer each night; add in a hearty amount of alcohol, constant cellphone use, and some karaoke and you have The Blind Date Project, a wildly unique hour of entertainment. Natalie Medlock returns as Anna after a previous sell out […]

REVIEW: Read My Lips (Basement Theatre)

July 17, 2019

[These Lips are Smiling] Embers Collective have produced a wonderful second original work in Read My Lips, a devised piece which draws from stories from Auckland’s Deaf community.  Read My Lips is the bubble of laughter from best friends performing dance choreography together in the living room, it is the bowed head and slumped shoulders of sadness, it is the […]

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