The super bright Fringe 2008 programmes are now available, after being released at a packed official launch on Thursday January 24 attended by the Hon. Judith Tizard and Kerry Prendergast, and MC-ed by Vinyl Burns. This year’s Fringe looks to be as action packed as previous years, with a wide variety of dance, visual arts, comedy, music and theatre shows on at various venues around Wellington. It’s a great chance to see experimental shows featuring fresh talent. Fringe Addict cards will be available again, with discounts to Fringe shows as well as hospitality and retail stores around Wellington. The programme is available on the Fringe Festival website, fringe.org.nz, where you can also sign up for Newsletters and a new feature, Fringe Txt alerts. Look out for the programmes at venues and stores near you!—Helen Sims

Circa Theatre
Jan 25-Feb 2 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

UPON WALKING into Circa One for Rabbit you notice several things that are out of character for the main auditorium at Circa Theatre. Firstly, the seating block has been altered to be in a “theatre in the round” style (where the audience sits on all 4 sides of the stage). Secondly, the set is downright stylish, accented with incredibly “now” blue and red lights. Set designer Brian King has done an excellent job of creating a modern, trendy bar atmosphere – assisted by playing Dirty Three as the pre-show music. A large, glass, multi-sided table dominates the centre of the stage – this is where Bella, or Rabbit as she is affectionately known, will convene with a disparate group of her friends for an evening. It also happens to be the night her father is dying in hospital...

BATS Theatre
Jan 25-Feb 2 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

Ground is set in an idyllic Otago camping ground and centres around Hon and Darl, a couple who have been coming there for years and have finally snagged the perfect spot. The play is split into five scenes and examines what happens when Hon and Darl’s possession of the plot is challenged by a large camper van with mysterious occupants that arrives in the dead of night and blocks their view. The play is light hearted in tone, but prompts a consideration about our possessive tendencies towards property, particularly land. Hon and Darl never contemplate a compromise that would result in their sharing the plot and view with the strangers they consider to be intruders. Instead they scheme in increasingly frantic fashion a way to re-establish their territory. In doing so they sacrifice their much longed for holiday.

Circa Theatre
Jan 18-Feb 16 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

Armslength starts off in story book fashion, with the actors telling a story about an ambitious young woman, who wants a lot of things that can’t happen at the same time. She goes to live on the top of the world, so that it can revolve around her. Thus begins a play which manages to balance two poles – the literal and the figurative; the story told and the story shown, with great skill.

Downstage Theatre
Jan 19-Feb 16 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst

TIM SPITE and the SEEyD Theatre Company have attempted to address the issue of paua poachers with their latest play with a political message. Although Spite, actor and director, claims he doesn’t do ‘issues theatre’ there is clearly a moral in this production – the problem, or the challenge, (depending on your perspective) is to work out what it is.

Downstage Theatre
Jan 19-Feb 16 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

THE SEEyD Company, helmed by Tim Spite, have a talent for taking issues that although topical, do not seem conventionally dramatic, such as child immunisation or wind farming, and turning them into gripping plays. The key to their success is both a thorough exploration of both sides of the issue without finally imposing a “correct” position and investing the story with realistic human experiences. Rather than exploring the issue at a national or international level, they show us a more intimate human face in the form of a community or even a single family struggling with it in their everyday lives. In Paua they fail to do this. The result is a show that fails to investigate the issue adequately and also fails to provide characters and storylines with which the audience can engage with in order to remain interested. The messages are as mixed as the ones received by the confused clairvoyant who briefly features and ultimately the moral dilemma was only weakly pursued. This was a shame, as the issue of eco-terrorism seemed ripe with possibility for the type of theatrical exploration SEEyD has provided in the past.

BATS Theatre
Jan 23-Feb 2 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst

THE TINKLES want to be New Zealand’s equivalent of The Wiggles, or Hi-5, and this ‘mockumentary’ style theatre charts their success, or lack of it, in a high-paced energetic play for grown-ups.

BATS Theatre
January 15-19 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

OTCAPOHCTMAHYL is based on the book by the same name by Richard Meros, which was written when “Aunty Helen” had been the PM for 6 years. Described by Meros as “ridiculous”, Pinfield and Meek have thankfully mined the more humorous and pointedly political content from the book to create an excellent stage play, with extra resonance given it is election year and shortly Helen’s political neck will be on the block. It’s less of a play in the conventional sense as a post-modern power point presentation. We are skilfully guided though the carefully constructed presentation by Meek, playing Meros, in order for him to persuade us of his point – that Helen Clark is in urgent need of a young lover, and the only viable candidate is him. The logic takes some magnificent leaps at some point, but there’s no denying the force of his argument. It’s also the cover for two other thinly veiled messages – the rampant individualism amongst 20-somethings as a product of the “Rogernomics” of a government which Clark was a part of, and the portrayal of Meros as a self-obsessed loner, the “poster-kid” of this generation. Ask not what you can do for your country, but what you can do for yourself!

BATS Theatre
January 10-19 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst

IN THE Bacchanals latest production, the life and poetry of John Donne is given the Blackadder treatment of history, in which salacious rumour and humour is preferred to cold hard facts. It is set at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but the comedy comes from the liberal sprinkling of anachronisms and the modern style of acting. In this historic pastiche, Simon Vincent has given real people a contemporary twist.

BATS Theatre
January 10-19 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

BLASTING the Sex Pistols as pre-show music proved to be an apt warm up for A Renaissance Man – it mostly features sword fighting, anarchy and sex. The show begins with a voice-over taking us back to 1599 and introducing us to the dire scene of Henry Donne about to be martyred for his Catholic faith in Protestant England. He is visited by his brother John (the ‘Renaissance Man’ in question, played by Phil Peleton) and a scene of despair, marked by stilted dialogue unfolds before Henry is dragged off. This is about as serious as it gets however. We soon learn that John is a lover not a fighter, and has been using his poetic abilities mostly as an aid to seduce various strumpets around London. The crazy Sir Philip Sidney, Chief interrogator for Queen Elizabeth uses John to deliver a cycle of appalling poems to his muse, Stella, and as an informant. However, the shady, hooded Catholic figure Edmund Campion, wants to enlist him to fight for the same cause as his brother. In addition the equally mad Earl of Essex (husband to Stella) also has plans for John as he seeks the throne. John just wants advancement, so he has to play all sides to try and increase his fortune. Add into this the flighty but quite cunning aristocratic Anne More, who only wants a wedding day, and John is in rather a mess. At the end of two hours this mess is (mostly) untangled.

Dunedin Xmas Pantomime 2007
Dec 20-22 | Reviewed by Renee Liang

THE PANTOMIME is one of those joyfully wacky British traditions (like cricket) which is sure to puzzle any hypothetical aliens watching us at Christmastime. But since I was in Dunedin and had never seen a pantomime, and my friend said she was in one, I borrowed some children and went.