BATS Theatre
April 27-May 5 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

RICH WITH wide and complex themes, contemporarily relevant and historically informative, Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day is yet another excellent choice of production by Wellington’s Theatre Militia.

In A Bright Room Called Day Tony Kushner (Angels in America) has created a piece of theatre that examines, among many other things, how issues of the personal and political, the reoccurrence of ‘evil’ in the world, and the subjective nature of the ‘good-bad’ dichotomy can be explored through paralleling the present with the past, the USA/West with Nazi Germany, the covert murder of masses with the overt.

Maidment Theatre
April 27-May 5 | Reviewed by Imogen Neale

THERE’s an ad currently running on the quasi-national radio station George FM. Two hapless guys are looking for something to do and end up at Burgundy’s with the cabaret queen Debbie Dorday. Like a broken, but very enthusiastic record, Debbie keeps greeting the boys with “See you at Burgandy’s!” When they try and tell her that they’re actually already at Burgandy’s, Debbie just repeats “See you at Burgandy’s!”

Paula Morris, author of Queen of Beauty, Hibiscus Coast and, most recently, Trendy But Casual, generously answered AMY BROWN’s questionnaire, via email from New Orleans. She returns to New Zealand in May as a guest of the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival.

Currently at the Adam Art Gallery, MARK AMERY urges all to see Darcy Lange’s vital retrospective Study of an Artist at Work.

Playing a rare show at City Gallery Wellington, The Dead C continue to fly under the New Zealand music radar despite international lauds. MATTHEW DAVIS asked guitarist and vocalist Michael Morley if it was still a bugbear.

The seventh Auckland Writers & Readers Festival, relocating to the Aotea Centre this year, is set to delight and entrall subscribers of the written word with 22 international writers, over 100 local writers and commentators, and 65 different events over four days, from Thursday May 24 until Sunday May 27. Public bookings are now open, with details, along with the complete festival programme, guest bios, interviews and reviews, available online at writersfestival.co.nz. The Lumière Reader’s own writers and readers will avidly cover the festival next month; in the meantime, they provide past reflections on some of the event’s notable guests.

San Francisco Bathhouse
April 18 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

SOME OF THE most frustrating moments in life can happen at a concert. People spend money to hear musicians display their talents – you’re paying to watch a professional at work. They may be good, they may be bad, they may be amazing, whatever really. But why oh why do people just show up to concerts and talk loudly throughout the whole gig? What did you honestly pay your entrance fee for? So other people can say they paid their entrance money to hear you talk? Surely it’d be cheaper to head down to the pub and talk there – hell, you could probably buy half a dozen with the money you would have spent on a ticket and talk as loud as you want. Last night’s concert was marred by an all too familiar arrogance, where singers and people genuinely interested in the music were frustrated by a disrespectful audience. It’s probably not going to do Wellington’s reputation among overseas musicians any good either.

By Kapka Kassabova
AUP, $25 | Reviewed by Simon Sweetman

WITH THREE other volumes of poetry and two novels behind her, this is Kapka Kassabova’s first book in nearly four years – and it is the writer returning to her strength, poetry, specifically poems that are variously studied and whimsical. Detailed and off-the-cuff. Observational asides on life from the point of view of a peripatetic soul, a transient being, a constant traveller.

San Francisco Bathhouse
April 13 | Reviewed by Allison Maplesden

EVEN A total shut-in would need only a vaguely informed flatmate to know that Samuel Flynn Scott is one of the lead singer/songwriters of Wellington superstars The Phoenix Foundation. Since the release of his solo effort The Hunt Brings Us life, Mr Scott has toured and been featured in his own right all over the wireless and print publications. Lesser known is the cryptically monikered Lawrence Arabia who, after releasing a self titled album, disappeared into that vast nether region known as Overseas. So it was somewhat surprising that the gig didn’t follow the traditional support-act-then-headline-act order. Instead the two shared the stage, and the spotlight, in a band formed specifically for the gig and the forthcoming tour it kicked off. Scott and Lawrence took turns at leading the band, showcasing songs from their recordings as well as newer ones.

Downstage
March 31-April 28 | Reviewed by Simon Sweetman

CHARLES WEBB’s novel (published in 1963) tells the tale of a self-conscious youth desperate to escape the boredom of his post-school milieu; his parents’ society friends bore him, everything bores him. Mike Nichols turned this material in to a counter-cultural classic, a landmark of modern cinema – one of the early anti-establishment Hollywood film works, signalling the end of the 1960s and spearheading the director-focused movies of the 1970s.

HELEN SIMS discusses the contemporary relevance of The Graduate. From novel to iconic film, it currently endures as a stage incarnation at Downstage Theatre in Wellington.

BATS Theatre
April 12-21 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst

IN THIS POWERFUL and moving piece of drama presented by the Wheelbarrow Group, Ronald Trifero Nelson directs a cast of eight young people to explore a seemingly pointless death and offer theatre as therapy. It contains violent content that may offend, and will certainly disturb, and notices in the foyer recommend counselling services to those who want to talk about issues raised by the performance.

Glen Eden Playhouse
April 15-21 | Reviewed by Imogen Neale

PETER SHAFFER’s 1973 play Equus poses two big performance questions: how to stage the horses and, how to handle the nudity?

For Jessie Peach the answers are big boots with horseshoe like plates nailed into the bottom and just doing it: letting Ashley Hawkes (who plays Alan Strang) be bare when it really counts.

Lumière photographer CATHERINE BISLEY surveyed the colour at this year’s WOMAD with camera in hand. We present the best of her images in gallery format.

Fu Bar, Auckland
March 23 | Reviewed by John Ochoa

DEAR NAS. Is hip-hop really dead? Well, that all depends on who you ask. To any other hip-hop mastermind, like you, who’s been in the game long enough to be able to distinguish raw talent from rhyme bitters, then yes, hip-hop may well be as dead as the dodo. That is, only if you’re scanning the superficial, commercial hip-hop market.

In an ongoing series, The Lumière Reader asks a diverse range of writers and readers about the book that got them into books.

I CAN’T REMEMBER a time when I wasn’t into books. I would’ve been about three when I’d wheedle my cousin, Jamie, who was ten years older and good at voices, into reading I’ll Take You to Mrs Cole!, by Nigel Gray, over and over again. Mrs Cole was the lady down the road who looked after children. There were rumours that she chained up her charges in the basement, next to a tank of hungry piranha fish and fed them nothing but “curly kale.” The older kids at Mrs Cole’s listened to loud music that went “thump doo waddy waddy thump”. It was a horrific prison for naughty children. But, in true picture book fashion, our narrator found that Mrs Cole was in fact a plump, motherly woman who made “bacon butties” and called all the children “me lover”. I remember always feeling comforted and hungry at the end of that book, the first one that got me.

The final third in Lumière’s WOMAD coverage, CATHERINE BISLEY recalls in images and words a weekend of mud, ducks and dancing as well as that wide group of folk who listen to and play “world music” – the most diverse genre out.

Circa Theatre
March 17-April 21 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

THOUGH framed as piece of political theatre about refugees, Two Brothers is less a discussion of refugee issues and more a psychological thriller meets examination of power relations. It is nonetheless a gripping and powerful tale. It goes someway to discuss the public apathy of wealthy nations and succeeds in illuminating the issue of power leading to corruption in today’s liberal ‘democracies’.

By Paula Morris
Penguin, NZ$28 | Reviewed by Amy Brown

FROM THE author of wonderful Hibiscus Coast comes a “comedy of bad manners”, a parody of chick-lit, an irreverent morality tale set in the Big Apple. Narrator, Jane Shore, is a mid-thirties workaholic in PR, obsessed with appearances, labels and efficiency. While she has a reasonably-sized apartment in West Village, an up-to-date wardrobe and some success at work, Jane is, as far as she knows, happy. But, as in all good plots, a character that is happy at the beginning doesn’t remain so for long.

San Francisco Bathhouse
March 27 | Reviewed by Nick Holm

IT SEEMS something of a non-sequiter that the hairy, fragile man who fronted on the San Francisco Bathhouse stage was once declared to be one of People magazine’s ‘Sexiest Men Alive’; hey kids, don’t do drugs. Look at Evan Dando, lead singer and centre piece of The Lemonheads across their many incarnations. During the early to mid 90s he was the darling of alternative music scene, back when people actually thought ‘alternative’ meant something. Shuffling and apologising on a Tuesday night, it was almost as if he’d forgotten that he used to be somebody – scratch that, that he used to be a god-damn monster of pop-rock, with the emphasis clearly on the rock.

Wellington Town Hall
March 27 | Reviewed by Mark Dryburgh

The Australian Quartet presented a programme of three pieces, the first of which was Haydn. Haydn was an Austrian composer who is remembered particularly by the political worth of his vast output of dedicated works and “historical” oratorios. Haydn's Imperial Anthem (theme from a Croatian folk song) eventually became the German national anthem as it is today. His string quartet Opus 76, No 5 was written after his second visit to London.

Downstage
March 31-April 28 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

The Graduate is defined as a “classic cult comedy”, and the play we are presented with at Downstage is just that – a humorous cultural memento of a past American generation. It provides many a laugh and some wonderful performances, from Mrs. Robinson (Catherine Wilkin) and a befuddled Mrs. Braddock (Geraldine Brophy) to the incensed Mr. Robinson (Peter Hambleton). But at times this production fails to move beyond the archival nature of the script to make direct contact with the audience. There are moments of one-dimensional screenplay, rather than live, engaging theatre.

Circa Theatre
March 31-April 28 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst

AT THE RISK of gushing, I have to say this Tom Stoppard translation of Gerald Sibleyras’ Heroes is absolutely fabulous; a great script, superb acting and simple but effective staging, combine to make a perfect piece of theatre.

Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

Age Pryor has been operating around Wellington for a while, participating in the highly popular Fly Me Pretties series. The good news for detractors and fans alike of that series, is that this album steps out of that shadow to deliver something a lot more interesting and varied than many would have expected. Shanks’ Pony is Pryor’s second album (following City Chorus in 2003) and mixes 60s sounds, the worldwide folk revival of the last few years and current indie pop into something highly enjoyable and catchy.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM trawls the music calendar to bring us the month’s best gigs. This April: Pig Out, Lawrence Arabia and Sam Flynn Scott, Lloyd Cole, Gomez, Richard Buckner and Edith Frost, Mastodon, Stephen and David Dewaele + more.

Media Release/Advertisement
Richard Buckner is the true American Wanderer. The American landscape is the backdrop he moves against (literally as well as figuratively; he’s been traveling the North American continent for two decades now) and his relationship to it is shifting and ambiguous, a complicated state of existing within and without a country that is impossible to escape from unscathed. His eighth and latest album Meadow was partially recorded in an old pencil factory. Away from the studio is where he really finds the space for his tired, haunting voice to soar. He was joined in the pencil factory by a backup band made up of members of Guided By Voices and the Mekons, and together they’ve made an album of quietly unsettling heartbreak and subtlety.

By Gregory O’Brien
VUP, NZ$30 | Reviewed by Joan Fleming

RENAISSANCE man Gregory O’Brien’s latest book is part travel story and part autobiographical swim. The gorgeously titled News of the Swimmer Reaches Shore is the product of six months spent in the south of France, immersed in art, literature, music, and the Mediterranean.

By Priya Basil
Doubleday, NZ$36.99 | Reviewed by Laura Fergusson

Ishq and Mushq joins the rapidly expanding genre of novels of the Indian Diaspora. Writers such as Jhumpa Lahiri and Hari Kunzru have in recent years established a new chapter in India’s relationship with colonialism and with literature, though fiction which explores the experience of growing up Indian beyond Indian borders, and examines issues of migration, tradition, language and identity.