[Forced Humour] Casual Star Wars fans might know Admiral Ackbar as the alien who turns to the camera during the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi to utter those immortal lines: “It’s a trap!”* This has helped Ackbar find latter-day day fame as an internet meme. I could also tell you the Mon Calamarian fought with Anakin Skywalker […]
Leg-Warming It would seem like a no brainer to turn Flashdance into a stage musical. Nostalgia is a powerful seller, and many an 80’s kid rewound their VHS copies to oblivion. The 1983 film is told with the logic of a musical, with just enough dialogue to get us to the next MTV-like dance montage. The film, for all its […]
[More Fool Us] The most dramatically interesting part of the opening night of Auckland Theatre Company’s You Can Always Hand them Back was actually what happened after the bows. The production marks 40 years of playwriting from national treasure Roger Hall, and the occasion was quite rightly used as an opportunity to pay tribute to Hall’s enormous contribution to New […]
If for nothing else, I’ll personally remember the 2016 Auckland Arts Festival for a kiss. It was in Tar Baby, when I found myself playing the role of race relations commissioner and sex object. Already I had been called up to the Spiegeltent stage in a group to help re-enact the history of slavery in the Americas, picking up sugar […]
[Down where it’s wetter] Entering the Spiegeltent for Meow Meow’s Little Mermaid is an experience in itself- on opening night there was an anticipatory queue even half an hour before the show started. We were ushered into an intimate in-the-round theatre with a thrust stage- my elbows were basically digging into my friend’s side for the whole show- yet this […]
[Two Critics with the Egos of Three Kings] Critics Matt Baker and James Wenley went to the National Theatre of Scotland’s The James Plays over the weekend and podcasted their experience. Catch their conversation during the breaks of their nine hour theatre marathon. They saw James I on the Saturday night, and James II and III the next day. Find out the immediate reactions from the […]
[A Worthy Scaffold] The original Globe theatre has a terrific origin story. Shakespeare and co were leasing ‘The Theatre’ in Shoreditch, but they didn’t like their landlord. A careful reading of the lease revealed that while they didn’t own the land, they did own the playhouse. A few days after a white Christmas of 1598, the acting company turned up […]
[Far too many notes for my taste] I should declare my Phandom up-front: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s masterpiece – yes, masterpiece – is a long-standing favourite. The moment Rob Guest’s mask was ripped from his face to reveal the Phantom’s awful disfigurement is a childhood memory burned into my mind. Amici’s pro-amateur production is the third version of the show I’ve […]
[There’s a double meaning in that!] More Shakespearean productions should do what the team behind Much Adoe do. To wit: the female roles are cast with male actors, the male roles are cast with female actors. We have the experience of watching the men take on Beatrice and Hero, roles written not for women, but for the ‘boy actors’ of […]
5 years ago to the day, I launched Theatre Scenes with a post that asked “Why Theatre, Why Now?“, a question that continues to grow in urgency. I had finished my Honours in Drama and would no longer be the Theatre Editor of Auckland Uni’s Craccum Magazine. I hoped that by starting Theatre Scenes I’d be able to keep reviewing and […]
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