The latest Theatreview Weekly includes reviews of  Acquisitions '15, Lumina, and Loving Kurt Vonnegut.

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

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The latest Theatreview Weekly includes reviews of  Acquisitions '15, Lumina, and Loving Kurt Vonnegut.

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

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SUDDENLY! A MUSICAL: Impressive improv skills
BATS Theatre, The Dome, 1 Kent Tce, Wellington
- reviewed by Simon Howard

It is to the great credit of everyone involved that Suddenly! A Musical works on multiple levels. For a start, the actors throw themselves into the performance with gusto, creating a defined individual character straight away and developing them to varying degrees throughout the hour.

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BUBBLELANDS: Theatrical titbit yet to satisfy
The Basement, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland
- reviewed by Dione Joseph

The plot is simple enough: a rather bawdy crayfish with a penchant for rapping to Psy and Soulja Boy meets an OCD blue cod in a fish tank in a Chinese restaurant. The play’s advertising promises a “fable of fishy sentience, ecology and sashimi” and while it doesn’t quite deliver that, what we do have is an extroverted street-smart crustacean whose humour, wit and charm offer some relief to our poor endemic marine fish who is suffering an existential crisis.

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K'RD STRIP - A PLACE TO STAND: Deeply moving, challenging and entertaining
Assembly, Roxy, Edinburgh, Scotland
- reviewed by Sarah Tuck

The show combines devised dance performance, beautifully mixed with haka and Kiwi songs interspersed with heart-wrenching monologues from six fabulous drag-queens. It's bold, beautiful and powerful as well as everything that is promised: “clever, confronting funny and deeply sexy.”

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THE VODAFONE SEASON OF A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM: The magic never lets up
St James Theatre, Wellington
- reviewed by Ann Hunt

Scarlett's choreography is wonderfully inventive, full of sweeping lifts that are echoed in the curves of the set design in their great arcs of movement. One can see why he is the current wunderkind of British ballet. He manages to convey through dance, all the beauty and complexity of Shakespeare's play. No mean feat.

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ACQUISITIONS '15: Playful and wonderfully abundant.
Playhouse, Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts, Hamilton
- reviewed by Brenda Rae Kidd

The dancers writhe and contort as bodies morph from position to position in a fight for space – to breathe. It is an intriguing work, as a shaking pulsing green light emanates from a dancers third chakra, one is left to ponder the significance. Located around the navel in the area of the solar plexus, the third chakra is a source of personal power and governs self-esteem, warrior energy, and the power of transformation. I may be off track completely but this work does allow one to interpret as one sees.

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THE VODAFONE SEASON OF A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM: Sparkling new production hits the jackpot
St James Theatre, Wellington
- reviewed by Jan Bolwell

George Balanchine, when creating his 1962 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Mendelssohn’s music, always maintained that you should not need to know the Shakespearean story in order to appreciate and understand the ballet. Certainly that is the case with talented young Englishman Liam Scarlett’s witty and refreshing choreography. In the programme notes he states: ‘My aim was always to remain faithful and true to what I believe Shakespeare had intended with this work, but to be able to show it in a fresh and vibrant re-working, bubbling with all the delight and humour that the wonderful array of characters conjure up through their own intertwining stories.’ This he has achieved in spades.

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LUMINA: Three part investigation into light - and dance
Maidment, Auckland
- reviewed by Francesca Horsley

The final work, Malia Johnston’s Brouhaha set to Eden Mulholland’s charismatic score, was a tour de force of dance, music and light.

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THE KEYS ARE IN THE MARGARINE: A VERBATIM PLAY ABOUT DEMENTIA: Shining a light on Alzheimer’s quiet heroes
Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre, Auckland LIVE, Auckland
- reviewed by Paul Simei-Barton

By giving physical embodiment to recorded interviews, verbatim theatre creates a remarkably powerful form of communication that is far more intimate than video but still allows for editing and shaping of the raw material into a coherent narrative.

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LOVING KURT VONNEGUT: The Bourgeois and The Beautiful
The Basement, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland
- reviewed by Jess Holly Bates

This is the kind of play made for people like me: English grads with a taste for clean design principles. First of all - I loved Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, and second, I’m a sucker for Christine Urquhart’s in-the-round staging and modernist eye. I am not disappointed – this turns out to be one ‘beautiful’ drama.

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THE KEYS ARE IN THE MARGARINE: A VERBATIM PLAY ABOUT DEMENTIA: Poignant tracing of changing relationships
Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre, Auckland LIVE, Auckland
- reviewed by Bronwyn Elsmore

Having reached an age where the odd occasion of having to look for glasses or car keys might brings on a tinge of concern, and having observed the development of dementia in others, I go along to this play thinking it could present a personal challenge.

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THE VODAFONE SEASON OF A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM: Ballet delightfully away with the fairies
St James Theatre, Wellington
- reviewed by Ann Hunt

The curtain rises. Fairies come creeping and flitting through the forest, followed by their King, Oberon, and their Queen, Titania, and we are in their thrall.

The magic and delight never let up.

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BAND OF MAGICIANS: Be amazed
Regent Theatre (Dunedin), Dunedin
- reviewed by Reuben Hilder

There is really only one thing a magic show has to do to be successful: confound its audience. Band of Magicians meets and exceeds this criterion with ease. ... The show combines a couple of old stage show favourites with a great many tricks and illusions that I guarantee you have not seen before.

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THE VODAFONE SEASON OF A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM: Glistening and luminous
St James Theatre, Wellington
- reviewed by Sam Trubridge

This is ballet with an almost cinematic approach to action and narrative, montaging movement across the space with great precision, kept time and pace by the omnipresent Puck and the swelling music. It is a brilliant crescendo that could have only done at times with a larger corps, when the dancers gather in unison for the fairies’ last dance.

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LOVING KURT VONNEGUT: Twists and turns in literary work with pathos
The Basement, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland
- reviewed by Paul Simei-Barton

Playwright Gary Stalker's intriguingly titled work pulls off a surprising feat with sophisticated, unashamedly literary writing that manages to be emotionally engaging and highly entertaining.

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BETWEEN THE CRACKS – YANA ALANA: Crude, classy, outrageous and never sleazy
The Famous Spiegeltent, 100 Devon Street East, New Plymouth
- reviewed by Holly Shanahan

Yana Alana is a character created by Sarah Ward: an emotionally fragile, demanding diva who has no idea quite how tragic she really is. She is like a blue, nude Mary Poppins in fast forward on valium.

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HOME / THE HILARIOUS COMEDY ABOUT HOW I NEARLY KILLED MYSELF / A PLAY ABOUT HOW I NEARLY DIED BUT DIDN'T THEN LEARNED A LOT ABOUT LIFE AFTERWARD: Seriously gutsy
The Dark Room, Cnr Pitt and Church Street, Palmerston North
- reviewed by Joy Green

Some of the comedy is, as the title says, hilarious; some, I found less so – but then I’m well into middle-age and I don’t think I’m the target demographic: the row of students in front of me certainly appreciate all the humour. The confession/tragic elements are raw, real and immediate: it’s impossible not to empathise with Desmarais in these moments.

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INFINITE SPACE: Full of promise but falls short
Bruce Mason Centre, Takapuna, Auckland
- reviewed by Sarah Knox

The Melbourne Ballet Company dancers are beautiful human beings, and are very skilled and highly trained. They possess the ability to easily achieve the technically challenging movement sequences prevalent within each work. However, there is a lack of breath and malleability of plié and this, combined with wobbly ankles and a sense of fatigue, results in instability at moments throughout. I also yearn for the dancers to find a deeper and more authentic connection with one another, to really touch each other instead of ‘showing’ or ‘performing’ to us their stroke of a limb or caress of a cheek.

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ADAM PAGE: Infectious passion and enthusiasm
The Famous Spiegeltent, 100 Devon Street East, New Plymouth
- reviewed by Ngaire Riley

He is not a small man and yet there is a delightful lightness to the way he ‘dances’ while managing the pedals which record, replay and select parts of what he is making.

Page is a relaxed raconteur as well as a musician.

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LOVING KURT VONNEGUT: Much to applaud despite amorphous purpose
The Basement, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland
- reviewed by Dione Joseph

Loving Kurt Vonnegut is a well-executed production driven by fabulous talent. The premise of playing games with a stranger in order to write a literary masterpiece is not exactly new but the direction does draw out some excellent performances.

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LUMINA: Fantastically illuminated spaces
Maidment, Auckland
- reviewed by Bernadette Rae

Malia Johnston's Brouhaha perfectly balances the play of light and projected image with fantastically danced movement. Discordant chords (music is by long-time collaborator Eden Mulholland) are matched by an emerging pathway of light, for example. AV design is by Rowan Pierce. Blocks and vivid strips and stripes and rectangles of light always meet or match or lead the danced movement. And the dance - and the eight dancers - are fantastic: strong, exceptionally fit and beautiful.

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LUMINA: Luminary
Maidment, Auckland
- reviewed by Jenny Stevenson

Louise Potiki Bryant’s outstanding new work In Transit created with composer and audio visual artist Paddy Free fully exemplifies the possibilities of this multi-media approach. Together they conjure up a world where the constant presence of ghostly figures created through projections of fluorescent, outlined silhouettes, emerge as what Louise designates “previous states of being”. They could equally be perceived as spiritual guides, or tipuna, moving as they do with their own unique larger-than-life aura.

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ALONE IT STANDS: Committed ensemble tells a salutary tale
The Wellington Irish Society, 17 Fifeshire St, Wellington
- reviewed by John Smythe

Seamless transitions between locations and plot lines allow the parallel stories of the two teams, two families, two groups of fans, and a bunch of kids intent on their traditional Halloween bonfire, to converge and entwine. It’s an impressive feat to get it on its feet and running like clockwork. All credit for that.

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LORD OF THE DANCE: DANGEROUS GAMES: Yet another incarnation of grand scale Irish dance
Civic Theatre, Auckland
- reviewed by Kate Ward-Smythe

However, all is forgotten and forgiven, every time the full company emerge in their hard black shoes and attack the floor with the rhythm and energy that has made this genre a global phenomenon. Just as they have in previous shows, it is these loud full company moments that remain the absolute highlight of the night. When they perform as a company, this cast is uniformly as dynamic and talented, as any other I’ve seen.

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LORD OF THE DANCE: DANGEROUS GAMES: Riverdance reinvented and upscaled
Civic Theatre, Auckland
- reviewed by Janet Whittington

The first of the multiple shows on stage is the magnificent screen, covering the entire back wall of the stage. Used to great effect to show a series of custom designed, imagined scenes to complement the action on stage and help with the story line. Michael Flatley appears in 2D with a child version of himself to open the show by pushing time forward on an oversized old clock, along with Flatley’s by-line for his life; “Nothing is impossible – follow your dreams”.

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

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