REVIEW: A Brisk Wind Whistling Down Twin Oak Drive (The Basement)

March 22, 2018

[Fun ’n’ Head Games] Created and performed by Phoebe Mason, A Brisk Wind Whistling Down Twin Oak Drive falls somewhere between one-person show and a Choose Your Own Adventure. The story (if one can call it that) starts out simply enough – our unknown protagonist wanders onto the titular street and finds themselves inside a strange house that feels oddly familiar. In the […]

REVIEW: Missing Lids (The Basement)

March 8, 2018

[Tupperware Talent] Missing Lids is one of Holly Newsome’s first full length works; an entertaining trio of dancers in yellow morph suits captivating their audience within the confines of the Basement’s Studio space. Since graduating from the New Zealand School of Dance, Newsome has created work (under her company name Discotheque) for Footnote New Zealand Dance and the Wellington Fringe […]

REVIEW: Fuck Rant (Auckland Fringe)

February 22, 2018

[Fuck Yeah] When I think of theatre company The Town Centre, the link from the agora (where the Ancient Greek public assembled for discussion) to the Theatre of Dionysus (where tragedians addressed social and political issues through mimetic representation) is unavoidable. So too are the words of Aristotle’s Poetics, where the rules to poetic writing were first composed. Over two thousand […]

REVIEW: Force Field (Auckland Fringe)

February 22, 2018

[To be reckoned with] Everyone has their own fantasy. Whether it’s living alone in a cabin in the woods, the nuclear family with the white picket fence, or somewhere in between, we each have our own scenario in which if we had that one thing, we would be happy. The truth, however, is that most of us don’t really know […]

REVIEW: Twenty Eight Millimetres (Auckland Pride)

February 16, 2018

[Measuring Happiness] It’s easy to imagine that if Sam Brooks were a writer in the 1950s Hollywood he’d fit right in making screwball comedies. His latest play Twenty Eight Millimetres offers itself up, at first glance, as a modern gay romcom, and the perfect vehicle for Brooks to show off his knack for whip-smart one-liners and I-wish-I-talked-like-this-in-real-life dialogue. It first […]

REVIEW: Fala Muncher (Auckland Pride)

February 16, 2018

[Much to Munch On] The term ‘fala muncher’, as described in the show’s promotion, is a derogatory term which refers to the act of a female of Pacific descent partaking in the licking and eating of another woman’s fala. The term also suggests a play on the word ‘fulla’ or ‘fella’, which loosely opens a discussion on homosexuality versus the […]

REVIEW: Santa Claus (The Basement)

December 14, 2017

[Ho Ho No] Aside from the Auckland Theatre Awards (a.k.a. the Hackmans), The Basement Christmas Show is the theatrical highlight of the holiday season. Each year, the Basement Theatre commissions the hottest theatrical talent to create a holiday hit that not only sees a smorgasbord of Auckland theatre practitioners and celebrities take to the stage, but also operates as an […]

REVIEW: Maggot (The Basement)

November 8, 2017

[Lice Girls] Appropriately named The Scungebags, the clowning trio of Angela Fouhy, Freya Finch, and Elle Wootton have created a wonderfully weird piece of theatre. Framed as a boundary-pushing sketch show created by a British pop trio, The Baby Girls, Maggot is immediately odd and resists easy categorisation. Performing distinct archetypes (deadpan, sexy, enthusiastic) with more than a few shades […]

REVIEW: The Mountaintop (FCC)

November 7, 2017

[The Baton Passes on] I had the pleasure of witnessing FCC’s staged reading of Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop a couple of years back. It was, to put it lightly, a stunner. With limited rehearsals and scripts in hands, the performance managed to create something truly magical, transporting us to Dr. Martin Luther King’s last night on Earth in Room 306 […]

REVIEW: Rēka (AUĒ Dance Collective)

October 27, 2017

[Totems and Taboos] Rēka grew from the short work AUĒ that won the Risk Taker Award at Short + Sweet Dance 2017. The original was reviewed as being restricted by the ten-minute time limit, and suggesting a longer work to come. True to the original, Rēka aims to be controversial and elicit a response from its audience; programme notes describe […]

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