REVIEW: Kūpapa (Te Pou Theatre)

July 5, 2021

[Existing In Between] “Kūpapa (noun) collaborator, ally, — a term that came to be applied to Māori who sided with Pākehā opposition or the Government. There has been a shift from a general meaning of neutrality to the modern use, which now sometimes has derogative connotations; traitor.” – maoridictionary.co.nz This play, however, is no straightforward indictment of protagonist and historical […]

REVIEW: The Vultures (Tawata Productions)

October 20, 2017

[A Carrion Call For Honour] Sibling relationships always provide great live theatre and playwright-director Mīria George’s insightful play The Vultures dredges up all the reasons why some relatives form factions and others follow their own path. The premise of the show, picking over the bones of a recently deceased estate, is familiar to many and the issues that are revealed […]

REVIEW: Sister Anzac (Stark Theatre)

August 25, 2016

[Honour & Horror] Theatre can do certain tones well. Visceral dread is not usually one of them. Sister Anzac is the rare drama that manages to feel like a completely theatrical yet horrifically immersive experience. Told from the perspective of three green New Zealand Red Cross nurses and their formidable matron, Sister Anzac (written by Geoff Allen) presents the battlefields of […]

REVIEW: A Doll’s House (Auckland Theatre Company)

May 5, 2015

Refurbished for the 21st Century [by Matt Baker] Henrik Ibsen may have been aware of the controversy that A Doll’s House would raise when he wrote it, but he certainly didn’t intend the specificity of it to be projected onto its female lead. Regardless, adaptations have continued to miss the collective relevance to its central character’s journey, reappropriating it with connotations […]

REVIEW: Awatea (Auckland Theatre Company)

July 22, 2012

Awatea Shines Brightly [by Sharu Delilkan] You knew the writing was on the wall the minute you walked into the theatre. I’m of course referring to the beautifully chalked letters that ‘panoramically’ filled the backdrop of the entire stage. So dramatic, intriguing and utterly effective was this device that you could not help reading some of the letters while the […]

REVIEW: The Motor Camp (Auckland Theatre Company)

February 12, 2012

Bringing back the cultural cringe [by James Wenley] Like many kiwis, I joined the yearly summer exodus from the cities, and went camping over New Years. The miserable rain-drenched ‘summer’ of 2012 had little to write home about of course, but it did provide me with one memorable experience: the family holiday train-wreck. Not my own, thank goodness. Evidently, the […]