Wellington Zoo
Feb 25-Mar 4 (Sundays) | Reviewed by Diane Spodarek

An Elephant Never Forgets was commissioned by the Wellington Zoo for its 100th birthday. The play is performed in the former elephant house. It was hard to believe elephants were housed in such a structure. But this is why it is a ‘former’ elephant house. The Wellington Zoo is working on change, making the environment more habitable and humane for the animals. Janie Walker has written a play that reflects this sentiment, giving a selected group of zoo animals a voice to tell their own story.

Fringe Festival 2007, BATS Theatre
February 23-26 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

THE LOOPEN EXPERIMENT, a collective from Christchurch, use dance, chanting and physical theatre in their movement-based Fringe show Fleet. The show seems to be taking us on a journey, presenting fleeting experiences and encounters of this journey, presumably as a metaphor for life experience. I say seems because at the end of this piece I was unenlightened as to what it was exactly that the group was trying to present.

Fringe Festival 2007, BATS Theatre
February 21-25 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

Brain Power is the second play written by Dean Hewison, and it also marks his first foray into directing for theatre. It is based on an interesting and original concept – the personification and investigation of the feelings and concepts that control our actions. This is interpreted quite literally – each character seeks to have a turn at manning the control room, and thus directing the actions of the vessel – in this case a man called Michael Sanderson, who we glimpse several times in the play lying in what appears to be a coma in hospital as his thoughts and feelings battle it out in his brain. Their motivations behind their desire to gain control are examined. It is revealed early on that the Concept of Cleanliness has been murdered, and the rest of the play is devoted to untangling the mystery of whodunit culminating in the “biggest trial of conscience ever.”

Fringe Festival 2007, BATS Theatre
February 18-22 | Reviewed by Diane Spodarek

Imagining Reality begins with a film of a woman taking a pee in a toilet. As we watch her, we are collective voyeurs. She never acknowledges us with her eyes but lets us know she knows we are there with her graffiti writing on the toilet wall: “I can’t believe you are watching this.” We are caught. But safe. We are, after all, the audience. We have come to watch.

Fringe Festival 2007, BATS Theatre
February 14-17 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

PERFORMING a solo show is a daunting task for any actor. Performing one which you wrote, and dealing with the expectations of an audience who saw your successful and highly acclaimed two person show in last year’s Fringe (The Cottage), only makes the enterprise more formidable. Kate Fitzroy rises to the challenge in I.A., proving again that she is one of Wellington’s most underutilised actors and a talented developing comedic writer. I.A. is a very different piece of work than The Cottage, however both are darkly humorous explorations of a serious theme.

Circa Theatre
Feb 10-Mar 10 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

THE DIRECTOR’S NOTE in the programme explaining the parabolic nature of Doubt is unnecessary to understand that this is a play that operates on several levels – on one level it is the story of a Catholic nun’s zealous quest to prove (even in the absence of objective proof) that a Priest who teaches at the school she is Principal of is having an “improper relationship” with the school’s first black student. This story is set in Brooklyn in 1964. This story has no clear resolution. On another level it is a parable (reinforced by Shanley’s slightly unnecessary addition to the title of the play when it was published) about the current climate of political and moral uncertainty in the Western world post 9/11. This story is set now, and resolution also doesn’t appear to be in sight.

Fringe Festival 2007, Good Luck Bar
February 12-21 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

A GUY (Ryan O’Kane) saunters into a bar. He eyes up the audience then takes a seat on a stool at a leaner. On this leaner is a bottle of vodka, several shot glasses and a glass of wine. Several members of the audience continue their conversations – surely this can’t be the beginning of the play? A girl (Jodie Hillock) walks rather more purposefully into the bar and takes a seat opposite the guy. She giggles then begins to laugh out loud. The aforementioned members of the audience appear confused – has the play started now? Where is the first line? It is soon delivered – “A man walks into a bar...”

Fringe Festival 2007, BATS Theatre
February 10-14 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

I WAS extremely reluctant to go to Hot Pink Bits on Sunday night. A mix of tiredness and general grumpiness did not put me in the mood for a show marketed as “brilliant ... hilarious ... horny”. I would much rather have been at home watching You Choose 40 on C4 in my PJs. By the time I had spent just over an hour with Mistress Pink (aka comedian Penny Ashton) my woes were gone and my funny bone had been rather naughtily tickled. I also had an overwhelming desire to dye my hair red and don a corset.

Fringe Festival 2007
Feb 9-March 4 | Reviewed by Justin Gregory

Hotel is the first show by the new theatre collective, site-specific.co.nz, an impressive new company committed to “taking the theatre out of the theatre... creating challenging, provocative and risky works”. Whilst there is nothing necessarily challenging, provocative or risky about Hotel, the fact of its location (Room 217 of the Museum Hotel, in a performance viewed by only twelve people at a time) does provide it with an intimacy and impact that simply couldn’t have happened inside a theatre, giving the audience a unique experience.

Fringe Festival 2007, BATS Theatre
February 7-11 | Reviewed by Diane Spodarek

ANGIE FARROW opens The Bowler Hat with Rene Magritte’s funeral, taking the artistic and surrealist license to create his death for the audience. Magritte is there naked on top of the coffin, or is he? His clothes, the ones that appear in many of his paintings – a dark suit, white shirt and bowler hat – are also missing. A priest in regal archbishop garb enters carrying a radio in a Joseph Cornell-type box and presides over the proceedings while Magritte’s wife and others, talk amongst themselves, in particular about Catholicism and nakedness. From here, the space and time move in and out of reality and dreaminess from a staged dance production to a carrot-chomping detective trying to find the killer of a drowned woman, or is that woman Magritte’s mother? And is Magritte also a suspect? And, the beat goes on. Magritte appears in his own play, reading his lines; and, just when we didn’t know what would happen next, it becomes clear, or not, but that is not the writer’s intention, or is it?

Fringe Festival 2007
February 7-24 | Reviewed by Diane Spodarek

‘THE PLAY’s the thing’ and the thing this summer is James Hadley’s new play, Lovers of Central Park. It is literally a stroll in the park, where the elements have a part to play along with over twenty actors, six directors and the unexpected: stray dogs, smart-mouthed kids, birds, traffic, wind, sun and changing light from bright to twilight in this two-hour production.

Helen Sims picks the best theatre at Fringe 2007:

» The Bowler Hat, by Angie Farrow, the writer of “After Kafka”. Based on her previous works this should be dark and surreal, but humourous enough for most to enjoy.

» Deliver Us, by Paul Rothwell features a highly talented cast in a play by one of Wellington’s edgiest new writers.

» Life As Antigone, a classic play and based on the originality of “Delicates”, this should be an interesting interpretation.

Also worth checking out: Brain Power, Scratch ‘n’ Fly, I.A., A Man Walks Into a Bar. Full programme details at fringe.co.nz

Acme Records
2003, NZ$34.99 | Reviewed by Alexander Bisley

“Analysing humour is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested, and the frog dies,” said the American author EB White. Ross Noble’s upcoming Wellington gig Fizzy Logic (St James, Feb 10, 8pm) is indispensable, as is Unrealtime. More proof the Geordie comic is (probably) the best British stand-up since Eddie Izzard, Unrealtime documents a performance from London’s Garrick Theatre. It doesn’t have all the magic of the live performance; you’re not as intimately part of the giddy improvised shards of audience interaction, such as a white boy in the front row extravagantly waving his hands like a rapper, around which Noble ingeniously constructs his shows.