By Geoff Cochrane
VUP, NZ$25 | Reviewed by Amy Brown

IF YOU’RE already a Geoff Cochrane fan, his latest work will not be disappointing. Cochrane’s relaxed precision, stunning vocabulary and formidable concision are all happily present in 84-484, a book full of memories, characters, Wellington, self-portraits and riddles.

Circa Theatre
July 21-August 25 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

Monarchy the Musical puns heavily on the idea of musical chairs. The music pauses, and the kings and queens of British monarchic history dash for the throne in a fervour of greed and excitement. Those left standing are either executed, or made use of to breed sons. As the cast of this Circa show enthusiastically reiterates: “The fun is where you’re standing when the music stops!”

St James Theatre
July 25-29 | Reviewed by Catherine Bisley

A DESPERATE sounding Frenchman leaves a message on an answering machine. He wants Aurélia to ring him back. The legs, feet and head of the aforementioned Aurélia pop out of draws at random intervals and impossible angles as she dresses inside a dresser.

Much of the publicity around Aurélia’s Oratorio has revolved on the fact this pretty ingénue is Charlie Chaplin’s great-granddaughter, Aurélia Thierrée. I was interested to see how the genes fared after three generations of dilution. Her parents, Victoria Thierrée-Chaplin and Jean-Baptiste Thierrée, are responsible for a number of great Arts Festival pieces (most recently The Bright Abyss), and certainly have the gift: I will never forget being eleven and in the gods at the Opera House, breathless as again and again, Aurélia’s mother swooped toward me on a trapeze (I went back for a second sitting of Le Circle Invisible).

Circa Theatre
June 30-July 28 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

Dumb Show, now in its final Circa Two week, has moments of hearty black humour – if such humour can be hearty – and witty, shrewd observation. Its representations of wry and hopelessly selfish modern ‘man’ encourage us to readily self-identify. And its portrayal of today’s media – albeit somewhat distant from the shores of tabloid free Aotearoa – is relevant and searching. But at times Circa’s Dumb Show seems to slip past the tug and weight of Joe Penhall’s script and fall into unlikely interpretation, relying too heavily on overstatement.

Via email, BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM interviews Alasdair Maclean of The Clientele, and asks him about the band’s work and influences that help produce such stunning work.

Bodega, Schooner Tavern
July 20/22 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

ALL OF THE criticism I had read of Nina Nastasia was over whether her voice was powerful enough. However, after watching a captivating performance last night, I think the resounding answer is that her voice is truly wonderful live, and what is probably a sign of a good singer, the voice that didn’t seem stretched even when it probably was. And although another Wellington talkative crowd marred a performance again, this was a gig full of beautiful music by the New York singer-songwriter, and was assisted with excellent drumming by Australian legend Jim White. (He’s a member of the Dirty Three, and had just finished a tour drumming for Cat Power).

BATS Theatre
July 6-21 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

Falling Petals, now in its final week at BATS, has an aspect of Heiner Müller about it. Relentless brutalism is overlaid with a kind of narcissistic sadism, shocking for being dirty, and dirty for being shocking, but with an impenetrable veneer of hysteria that is impenetrable for a good reason. At times what lies beneath rings as hollow as the town it is based upon.

BATS Theatre
July 4-21 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

BOTH Mãori and Italian traditions are interwoven in this piece of brilliantly inclusive theatre by Paolo Rotondo and Rob Mokaraka. Strange Resting Places contacts with what is “real”, and creates a genuine theatrical interaction. Its direct acknowledgement and manipulation of medium is an appreciated change from the sometimes frustrating nonchalance of realism in much current theatre.

By Louise Wareham Leonard
VUP, NZ$30 | Reviewed by Jennifer Van Beynen

LOUISE WAREHAM LEONARD’s second book, the awkwardly titled Miss Me A Lot Of, attempts to be an exploration of the values we live by. The book discusses prevalent values such as physical attractiveness and worldly success, and the people who exemplify them. The world of appearances and its translation into relationships is the main theme, and the story shows how lies and dissatisfaction lie close beneath the surface of aesthetically perfect veneers.

BATS Theatre
July 6-21 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

Falling Petals is the second play this year by an Australian playwright dealing with Australian social issues, some of which strike a chord across the ditch. In contrast to Two Brothers that played earlier this year at Circa, this play has a more universal pre-occupation. It is set in the remote country town of ‘Hollow’ (plays on the name of the town and its ‘Hollow’ inhabitants are exploited throughout), in which a mystery illness, termed the ‘syndrome’ is wiping out the young inhabitants by apparently causing their organs to stop working together. As the syndrome spreads and progresses from primary school aged children to teens, all the young of Hollow are shunned by the adults of the town. The play examines the process of becoming an outcast and the resultant loss of choices and identity, and the victimisation of outcasts by figures of authority. It also deals with excess individualism, and the sense that problems are ‘out there’, happening to someone else.

Victoria University, Studio 77
July 6-15 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

I HAVE TO confess that although I have been educated to a moderate extent in the fundamentals of Greek drama and its most famous tragic and comedic scripts, I have been exposed to a pitifully small amount of it live. Antigone at Victoria University’s Studio 77 represented a welcome opportunity to see one of my favourites for the first time on the stage. It absolutely did not disappoint, being a well thought out production that presented the essence of the tragic story and its themes. It oscillated between raw human emotion and stylised mask work with great effect.

Circa Theatre
June 30-July 28 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

IN ENGLISH theatre tradition, a dumb show is a masque-like interlude of silent pantomime usually with allegorical content that refers to the occasion of a play or its theme, the most famous being the pantomime played out in Hamlet. Although Penhall’s script is far from silent, I suppose that it is what is not being said; the reading between the lines, that is most important in this play. The Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Dumb Show was described in The Age as a “tabloid immorality play”, tackling the themes of media corruption and emptiness. In the playwright’s own words, Dumb Show is “about what happens in the absolute absence of compassion, where society is becoming a vacuum devoid of any real empathy and sympathy, where the only thing that’s left is an utterly plasticized, platitudinous and prurient tabloid sentimentality.”

By David Cook
Craig Potton, NZ$49.95 | Reviewed by Andy Palmer

IN THE Waikato, over the river from Huntly, are a number of small towns which existed largely to work the coal fields. Rotowaro was one of those communities. If you drive through the area today you will see next to nothing indicating the presence of the town at all.

Rotowaro has the dubious honour of being closed down and the population relocated by State Coal Mines (as Solid Energy was then known) because they needed the coal over which the town had grown.

MARK AMERY inhales the cool atmosphere of Laurence Aberhart’s overwhelming 30 year photography retrospective, currently exhibiting at City Gallery Wellington.

New Zealand New Writing Winter 2007
VUP, NZ$19.95 | Reviewed by Simon Sweetman

THE 35th issue of Sport is the first to be released after the career-to-date anthology, Great Sporting Moments 1988-2004. The Victoria University Press-issued collections of new prose and poetry writing were coming out twice a year up until 2003. And then, fifteen years in to the literary magazine’s career, the strain started to show. It’s now an annual affair.

By Pierre Furlan
VUP, NZ$25 | Reviewed by Amy Brown

PIERRE FURLAN, the 2004-2005 French writer in residence at Wellington’s Randell Cottage, is a new and welcome addition to Victoria University Press’s stable. Bluebeard’s Workshop is not Furlan’s first book or first connection with New Zealand (he’s the author five works of fiction, and has translated, amongst many others, Elizabeth Knox and Alan Duff) and, by the sounds of it, will not be his last. At the Auckland Writers’ and Readers’ Festival, Furlan sang the praises of the translator of this collection, Victoria University’s senior lecturer in French, Jean Anderson, comparing the difficulty of finding a sensitive translator to delicate matter of finding a compatible spouse. He is currently finishing a novel set in New Zealand, which will no doubt be entrusted to Anderson.

St James Theatre, Aotea Centre
June 23-July 21 | Reviewed by Simon Sweetman

GAETONA DONIZETTI’s opera from 1835 takes Walter’s Scott’s 1819 novel, The Bride of Lammermoor as its basis, but with star-crossed lovers and a heroine left to go mad you could be forgiven for thinking this is yet another version of something by that guy Bill Shakespeare.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM trawls the music calendar to bring us the month’s best gigs. This July: Bill Direen, Dinosaur Jr., Liam Finn, Nina Nastasia & Jim White, The Clientele.

SAPNA SAMANT recalls her rendezvous with Vikram Chandra – author of Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Love and Longing in Bombay and most recently Sacred Games – at the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival.