A selection of reviews from Theatreview from the last week including White, Much Ado About Nothing, A Play About Love, and The Last Five Years.

See more recent reviews at theatreview.org, the NZ Performing Arts Review & Directory.

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A selection of reviews from Theatreview from the last week including White, Much Ado About Nothing, A Play About Love, and The Last Five Years.

See more recent reviews at theatreview.org, the NZ Performing Arts Review & Directory.

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Capital E, Wellington - WHITE: A simple yet profound celebration of diversity

- reviewed by John Smythe

Perfectly pitched for pre-schoolers and new entrants, White absorbs all ages, not least because the stage illusions – seamlessly achieved with no ballyhoo – will intrigue anyone with an enquiring mind.

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Clocktower Lawn, University of Auckland, Auckland - MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: Well-paced charmer

- reviewed by Nik Smythe

Behind the Auckland University campus clock tower, just around the corner from the usual spot, the 49th annual Auckland University Summer Shakespeare is a tightly directed little charmer, authentically liberal in interpretation and heavy on the comedy.

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BATS, Wellington - A PLAY ABOUT LOVE: Performance tail wags true-story dog

- reviewed by John Smythe

Beneath its meta-theatrical playing about, its 'gonzo dramaturgy', this is a prosaic little story about love sought, gained and lost. But of course when it happens to you it's a big deal at the time and that should be the connection point with its audience.

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Basement Studio, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland - THE SEVEN FUNERALS OF CHARLIE MORRIS: Charm, style and smarts

- reviewed by Stephen Austin

The sense of what it means to grow and understand the world around you is developed and the characters are allowed every moment of realisation, completely and very realistically. The actors all take hold of this marvellous script and breathe buoyant, immediate life into these complex, fallible characters.

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TSB Bank Arena, Queens Wharf, Wellington - BEAUTIFUL BURNOUT: A visual spectacle without much depth

- reviewed by Helen Sims

Each of these monologues is delivered in exactly three minutes, mirroring the length of a boxing round. The countdown is shown on screens that cover the wall at the rear of the stage. The mosaic of screens shows the beautiful video design by Ian William Galloway, featuring star bursts, slow motion boxing sequences and crackles of electricity, amongst other things. It’s a brilliant backdrop to the play, especially as the set is sparse.

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TSB Bank Arena, Queens Wharf, Wellington - BEAUTIFUL BURNOUT: Fights like dances elevate boxing tale

- reviewed by Laurie Atkinson

Techno music rattles your eardrums and bright lights dazzle your eyes as you enter the TSB Arena which has been arranged so that the audience is seated on three sides of a boxing ring without ropes. On the back wall are artfully arranged television screens that occasionally show us fractured shots of close-ups of punches, starry skies, domestic scenes, and the glitz and glamour of the boxing world.

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Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre, The Edge, Auckland - THE LAST FIVE YEARS: A show to fall in, and out of love..

- reviewed by James Wenley

It’s a love song full of dreams and beautiful sentiment in its lyrics, but melodically it’s slow, heavy, with a hint of the sinister. With a real sense of musical foreboding, not the soaring love song the lyrics suggest – this love, and its platitudes, are doomed.

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St James Theatre, Wellington - TEZUKA: A truly unique enriching experience - not to be missed

- reviewed by Greer Robertson

Cherkaoui, coactively absorbed by his life, takes us on a journey through many styles of delivery. At times it is documented by way of the spoken word in French, Flemish, Japanese and English. At times, by way of powerful imagery. At times, with sympathetic yet subtly comedic characters and choreography. At times, by expansive technically creative expert staging. While all the time superlatively thread together with live onstage Japanese music and consummately passionate musicians and dancers.

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Downstage Theatre, Wellington - FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS: TO BE OR NOT TO BE: More matter amid this artifice

- reviewed by John Smythe

To say this is too long would be to court derision as one who would prefer a jig or a tale of bawdry. To say its attraction is limited to those with a good working knowledge of Shakespeare may be to state the bleeding obvious.

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BATS, Wellington - AN UNFORTUNATE WILLINGNESS TO AGREE: Conceptually coherent, original and affecting

- reviewed by Emma Willis

The performance begins when, with the television still playing, the three performers get up from the front row, where they have been embedded amongst other audience members. They each raise a glass wine and walk towards the television. The toasting gesture turns to convulsion. This image sets up Connew’s central concern: how human intimacy is mediated by technology. In the programme he notes that it was his family members’ various departures from Wellington that inspired the work. What follows are a series of images and scenes that investigate the technological threads that bind (or fail to bind) us together.

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TelstraClear Festival Club, Wellington - CANTINA: A gluttonous, scrumptious feast for the eyes

- reviewed by Caoilinn Hughes

Seeing Strut and Fret Production’s Cantina the night after Ronaldo’s Circensus added an interesting perspective to the show. Although Circensus did not aim to present incredible feats of physics, anatomically absurd acrobatics or mind-blowing physical prowess (as it is not a traditional circus), if it had, it would have paled in comparison with Cantina’s dark, dangerous dexterities.

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Soundings - Te Papa, Wellington - MASI: The magical experience of discovery and recovery

- reviewed by John Smythe

Masi is another 'must see' festival show. Like the quest it embodies it is simultaneously mysterious and exotic yet strangely familiar.

As creator/director and the pivotal performer, Nina Nawalowalo draws on the history, mythology and craft of masi (Fijian tapa cloth) to find her own way back to her paternal roots.

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Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre, The Edge, Auckland - THE LAST FIVE YEARS: Rich, full, devastatingly delicious

- reviewed by Melisa Martin

Auckland’s new kid on the block, Last Tapes Theatre Company, debuted with a bang on 1 March with Jason Robert Brown’s musical The Last Five Years under the fine direction of Jennifer Ward-Lealand.

The emotional rollercoaster serves as a headstone for a marriage gone south, that could have been offered as a hollow memorial to ‘the honeymoon period’ ...

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Allen Hall Theatre, Dunedin - BE | LONGING: A VERBATIM PLAY: Lovingly drawn

- reviewed by Terry MacTavish

This exercise engenders a cosy sense of community; actors and audience mingle and wander across the set, which is no more than a few chairs and one table in front of a screen. All very low key, and suited to the style of verbatim theatre.

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Basement Theatre, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland - PLAY ME DEADLY!: B-Theatre Fun: So bad it's good

- reviewed by James Wenley

Bela Lugosi’s career was rock bottom by the time he was working with infamously bad film director Ed Wood. After gaining success as Dracula in the 1930 film, Lugosi became a regular in horror films. By the 1950s however, he was washed up and irrelevant until Ed Wood bought him out of obscurity to star in his low budget B movies.

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Opera House, Wellington - HENRY V:

- reviewed by Charles Bisley

What this assured performance of Henry V gave us above all was a forceful story. A story in which the action and the lines propelled each other forward – a sustained and considerable feat! Both served to present the legendary warrior king of the English narrative in a modern and compelling guise. And to raise old questions about power and violence.

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Pipitea Marae, Thorndon Quay, Wellington - TU: A profound experience that goes to the heart

- reviewed by John Smythe

Hone Kouka and his Tawata Productions have created a powerful, moving and resounding play inspired by Patricia Grace's novel, Tu. It is an adaptation – the story is, in essence, the same although some character names have been changed – but the means of expressing it, of showing that essence, is very different.

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Waitangi Park, Wellington - CIRCENSES: Subversive circus

- reviewed by Caoilinn Hughes

Being a circus aficionado, when I approached the Ronaldo’s Circenses circus tent last night, I could sense that something was different, and not just the season. (And boy did summer shut us out like a teenager’s slammed door last night.)

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Opera House, Wellington - THE WINTER’S TALE: Moving and magical

- reviewed by Lori Leigh

Tonight Propeller jumps a decade or so forward in Shakespeare’s career to one of his late plays and romances, The Winter’s Tale. Though The Winter’s Tale, like Henry V, has a king at its helm, the play is decidedly more domestic.

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Basement Theatre, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland - PLAY ME DEADLY!: Fun for the actors

- reviewed by Stephen Austin

It can always be tricky making something intentionally 'bad'. Somewhere between the script and the production itself, a fine line needs to be worked between the truth of the characters and the ridiculousness of the shoddy production values.

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Mangere Arts Centre, Auckland - HIS MOTHER’S SON: Pacific Stories, Pacific People

- reviewed by Sharu Delilkan

I have to admit that I’ve not been privileged enough to have seen the previous two incarnations of Samoan playwright Leilani Unasa’s critically acclaimed play His Mother’s Son. Originally from Mangere, Unasa bringing His Mother’s Son to the Mangere Arts Centre could not have been more appropriate.

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St James Theatre, Wellington - BIRDS WITH SKY MIRRORS: Threnody, lament, plea for humanity

- reviewed by Lyne Pringle

A woman begins, audacious, almost naked in high heels with cold stare and belts out a raucous, breasts erect, karanga; irreverent, sexualised, surprising, confusing. Shattering kaupapa, this work creates its own genre and melds the cultures of the Pacific into a primordial ocean of its liking; one that suits the purposes of the choreographer first and foremost.

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Blue Barn, 16 King St, Mt. Cook, Wellington - THE TRAGIC TALE OF THE E N' B: A COMEDY: Tough times for the Egg and Brick

- reviewed by Ewen Coleman

Over the years political satire has been a very common form of theatre yet Emotional Tramps production, under Tim Yarrow's direction, of Andrew Goddard’s play The Tragic Tale of the E 'n' B: A Comedy takes this a step further into political absurdity.

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Downstage Theatre, Wellington - MICHAEL JAMES MANAIA: Superb and gutsy

- reviewed by Lynn Freeman

This is the story of a young man damaged emotionally and physically by war – and not only his own experiences in Vietnam. Michael James Manaia is a victim, just as those he killed in the line of duty were victims. He reminds us that wars don’t actually end, their repercussions span generations.

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Circa One, Wellington - PENINSULA: Seismic rumblings

- reviewed by Lynn Freeman

Family epics are the stuff of theatre – there is such drama within most families, tensions and jealousies, power plays and the ultimate journey, from childhood to adulthood.

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Civic Theatre, Auckland - NYC THREE SHORT BALLETS FROM THE BIG APPLE: Final Dress the highlight in NYC season

- reviewed by Roxanne de Bruyn

Set in a studio, it is strong, sexy and very dramatic, filled with sharp movements and surprising twists. The costumes are modern, and quick changes, dressing and undressing performers, explore the boundaries of studio and stage, private and public and the passage of time. A distinctly contemporary ballet... it is also the clear favourite of the audience.

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Fringe Bar, Cnr Cuba & Vivian, Wellington - THE NO NONSENSE PARENTING SHOW: A meaty message from the right

- reviewed by John Smythe

Redolent of a certain self-satisfied and whiney-toned celebrity clinical psychologist,Jonny Potts' Alan Legtit takes the stage at the Fringe Bar ... to prove how dangerous such guru types can be.

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New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Queens Wharf, Wellington - HURAI: Important work delivered with flair

- reviewed by John Smythe

Initially there is fun to be had at the expense of Keene's uptight morality and protestant work ethic, as this wife Agnes is drawn to the Maori way of life, exemplified by a Chorus of three: Martine Gray, Holley Hornell and kahu Taiaroa. Keene's right-hand-man Alexander Williams, dubbed Wiremu, attempts to moderate but lives only to report the atrocities that ensue.

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Opera House, Wellington - HENRY V: Squaddies, blood, sweat and tears in a macho Henry V

- reviewed by Laurie Atkinson

In Propeller’s striking, macho and often thrilling production the Chorus is divided into fifteen men, all dressed as squaddies who might well be on their way to Afghanistan or the Falklands. At times they also sing during the play and in the interval a whole range of songs from the Pogues to hymns.

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Opera House, Wellington - HENRY V: Solid, bold, and often very brave in 'becoming' the story

- reviewed by Lori Leigh

Fourteen actors storm the stage singing, amidst the audience, with the house lights in full beam, to collectively assume the role of the Chorus — a role shared by the company throughout. Preshow, the audience is subjected to menacing men stalking the foyer in black balaclavas preparing us to enter the world of war. This electric ensemble work which begins Propeller’s Henry V is enthralling and the highlight of the entire production.

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Mangere Arts Centre, Auckland - HIS MOTHER’S SON: Moves and surprises with quiet beauty

- reviewed by Grant Hall

His Mother’s Son, a powerful and intelligent play written by Leilani Unasa, is a story made up of mysterious parts and focuses on a fractured Samoan / Palagi family, spanning three generations. The narrative is refreshingly non-linear and takes the audience to some unlikely places and scenarios, all with a healthy dose of comedy, drama and poignancy.

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Victorian Garden Conservatory, Hamilton gardens, Hamilton - HOT PINK TEETH 'N' TITS: Well-rounded doco hilarity with singing, dancing and hand-held spunk

- reviewed by Gail Pittaway

Failing to win Miss Waikuku Beach contest in 1983 may have been traumatic for Penny Ashton but it gave her a strong reason to investigate the world of beauty pageants and write this whole new season of great comedy.

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See more recent reviews at theatreview.org.nz, the NZ Performing Arts Review & Directory

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