Alia Marshall Brought to us by the brilliant Te Rākau Hua o Te Wao Tapu, Out the Gate is Theatre Marae that seeks to start a conversation about incarceration in Aotearoa. Legends of Aotearoa’s theatre scene Jim Moriarty (Director), Helen Pearse-Otene (Playwright), and Tānemahuta Grey (Choreographer) have come together with 16 performers and a musician (Rameka Tamaki) to create this mahi, and I find myself excited despite the show’s promised heavy subject matter.
Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin After their grandmother passes away, a child suspects they are being pursued by the smoke demon shapeshifter of the old woman’s stories. The Griegol is a dark fantasy in the vein of Spirited Away, for older children and adults. Combining hi-fi with lo-fi technology, and the mythic with the everyday, The Griegol is a charming, moving, and wildly inventive piece from Trick of the Light Theatre.
Alia Marshall Monument written by Emily Sheehan explores the relationship between a world leader and her makeup artist. It’s a simple fact that women in power are held to a higher standard when it comes to how they present themselves, while the men they work with just have to shave and slap on a tie. I’m someone who has adored makeup from a very young age (thank you 14 year old emo phase), and is perhaps a little bit too invested in politics, so I feel pretty excited as I enter Circa Two to watch a show centering on both subjects.
Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin Heartbreak Hotel is for the young hearts, the old hearts, and the broken hearts. From acclaimed Wellington-based theatre company EBKM, who brought their ground-breaking Gravity & Grace to Circa Theatre last year, Heartbreak Hotel tracks a woman’s broken heart in a wrenching and relatable journey that’s studded with classic break-up songs and razor-sharp observations on the physiology of love.
Julia Bon-McDonald Talking Heads released the song Heaven in 1979. Here’s the main refrain: ‘Heaven is a place, a place where nothing, nothing ever happens’. If the song is to be believed, is the inverse a place where nothing ever stops happening?
Brie Keatley This is my second time reviewing a show by Horse With No Name and I can honestly say they are consistently absolutely smashing it. From the costumes to the performances, everything in Kiwi’s Big Hararei (written by Ryan Cundy and Catriona Tipene, also directed by Tipene) is polished and full of energy.
Jack McGee  At the beginning of Manage Your Expectations, performer/creator Eliza Sanders monologues at length about what the rest of the show will be. As she does this, she frequently contradicts herself, doubling, tripling, quadrupling back to clarify and re-clarify every new idea. All thoughts are treated as equally significant, or insignificant, to the point where we as the audience lose the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff, our brains scrambling to make sense of all the words coming at us. Not to mention the litany of puns. It’s a cacophony of context.
Guy van Egmond Thriller is a genre of control, holding back information to keep the audience unsettled, guiding exactly what they’re allowed to learn and when. An author can drip-feed information by the word; a filmmaker has total direction over what the audience can hear and see. But a thriller on stage is a whole other ballgame.
Brie Keatley What does it mean to be alone? What is death? And where does the sun go when it sets? All these questions are grappled with by Robert Lloyd in his mystifying first original piece There once was a boy.
Guy van Egmond When the call came in to review Shakespeare’s North’s latest production, I was keen. I found their staging of Julius Caesar—last year at two/fiftyseven—endearing; though it lacked spectacle, the company had great enthusiasm and familiarity with Shakespeare’s work. I was curious to see what they’d pull off this time, bringing The Life of Henry the Fifth to the (arguably better-suited) Dome at BATS.
Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin Ration the Queen’s Veggies is a solo(ish) play written by Te Wehi Ratana and Tainui Tukiwaho, directed by Tainui Tukiwaho and performed by actor Ngahiriwa Rauhina. Brought to us by Te Pou Theatre, it is an unreal retelling of real happenings. It shares the remarkable experience of the abseiling activist Te Wehi Ratana during his 48 hours at Rimutaka Prison.
Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin 50 years ago, ABBA released their self-titled album that homed the single: Mamma Mia! To celebrate is this season of Mamma Mia! at the St James Theatre, directed by Maya Handa Naff, choreographed by Catherine Reid and musical directed by Hayden Taylor. If you haven’t been to the St James yet, this is your invitation.
Alia Marshall My Puppet Who Sighs in Pearl Shavings is a multidisciplinary trans allegory brought to us by Landfish Productions, a collective of new and emerging practitioners in Pōneke. This intimate solo work, written and performed by Raven Harvey-Lomas, promises to take us on a journey of the self: “one of its origin, and one of its end.”
|
