By Joe Dunthorne
Penguin, NZ$37 | Reviewed by Amy Brown

SOMEWHERE between Salinger’s Holden Caulfield and Will, in Nick Hornby’s About a Boy, comes Oliver Tate, a Welsh, 15-year-old only child, long on vocabulary and short on charm. No, that’s not quite right; Oliver’s blend of selfishness, lust, academic ability, vanity and confusion amounts to the sort of charm often present in the protagonist of a bildungsroman. Joyce’s Stephen Daedalus had it, and so did Alice Munro’s Del Jordan, but the fact they don’t exist in our contemporary world of Google, iPods, therapists and vegetarian sandals, somehow makes them more likeable.

Happy
March 27 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

CANADIAN singer-songwriter Hayden boasted an unexpectedly compelling presence – he had a quiet, unassuming demeanour yet he was armed with a winning stories and lovely songs. This could easily have been a very understated, gentle gig, instead a transfixed audience at Happy were treated to a beautiful set by the Canadian veteran. It was his voice, his voice was the thing that dragged you in by the collar, paradoxically sounding both like a spade in gravel, and caramel dripping off a spoon. It matched his storytelling perfectly – it was intimate and surreal, tender and sharp.

Bowl of Brooklands, New Plymouth
March 14-16 | Reviewed by Alexander Bisley

WOMAD 2007 is one of the musical highlights of my life. With damn exhilarating and intoxicating acts like Mariza and Salif Keita, I will remember it fondly forever. After a roadtrip scored with discerning mixtapes courtesy of Lumiere’s Music Editor, Beirut were first up in 2008. I quite liked them, particularly ‘My Life’ (introduced as ‘My Wife’ the next night) with its striking horns counterpoint, but I don’t believe the hype. While the Bowl of Brooklands didn’t feature transfixing, sensual magic like The Gotan Project this year, Afro-Peruvian chanteuse Susana Baca and dynamic gypsy rogues Taraf de Haidouks impressed. (The flags, normally evocative of hope and emancipation, were a bit garish.)

Te Karanga, K’Rd Auckland
March 27 | Reviewed by Renee Liang

SMACKBANG THEATRE is an example of the No. 8 wire mentality: if it needs doing, do it yourself with what’s available and bit of the old Kiwi ingenuity. It’s a new theatre running on Thursday nights in a corner of the rather cosy art gallery/teahouse/radio station/tattoo studio run by the Te Karanga Trust on K’Rd.

NZ Arts Festival, Writers & Readers Week
March 15 | Reviewed by Sarah Jane Barnett

BRING to mind Basil Fawlty goose-stepping through his hotel’s dining room as his German guests eat dinner, after issuing his staff with the order, “Don’t mention the war!” he cannot restrain his own verbal and physical blunders.

NZ Arts Festival, Writers & Readers Week
March 16 | Reviewed by Joan Fleming

ILLICIT attractions, gay Catholics, rapists, whores, heroin, the letter E: the Legitimate Dangers session at Writers and Readers Week featured a group of novelists, historians and poets who are good at being bad. This handful of rule-breakers talked about getting knee-deep in the muck, whether it be muddy social taboos or sticky linguistic prohibitions. Sound poet Christian Bök defined his own motivations to break the rules by lamenting, “These days, it’s impossible to write a poem that would cause a riot. I think that’s a shame.”

Opera House
March 24 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

Wilco come with a lot of baggage. There’s the nonsensical claim that they are the “American Radiohead”, or the fact to some they’re the indie Messiahs who took on a major with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and won (well, kinda), or, the mutterings about Jeff Tweedy’s inability to keep a band intact, or the fact that the band have confidently, unclassifiably, straddled a plethora of genres (just compare A.M. to ‘Spiders’ from A Ghost is Born for example). Indeed there is so much baggage, that it’s easy to forget that they’re a top live band. Purely and simply: great performers, armed with great songs. And in Wellington, they showcased this in an epic two hour set that covered material from all over their career.

TSB Arena
March 20 | Reviewed by Tim G

TONIGHT, I forked out an over-inflated ticket price purely for old times sake, predicting a personal nostalgia trip in the Smashing Pumpkins. The teenage emotion once felt whilst listening to a dubbed version of Siamese Dream would all come flooding back and it would seem like 1998 again. Yet, my hope to be transported back to my 14-year-old self never quite transpired.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Town Hall
March 12 | Reviewed by Tim G

Clube Do Balanço are a band who are credited with bringing Samba back to a world stage, they are often credited with bringing a traditional form of music to the masses in a way that is accessible and alluring. In their New Zealand International Arts Festival performance, they proved that they have the ability to move and infect the crowd with a Samba vibe.

Wilco are one of the world’s biggest alternative groups, with critically and commercially successful albums such as Being There, Summerteeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born. SIMON SWEETMAN catches up with drummer Glen Kotche, as the band play their first shows in the country since 2003’s Big Day Out.

BATS Theatre
March 13-29 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst

THE PRESENCE of bouncers gives a club a certain atmosphere. They can be confrontational, welcoming, warning or sophisticated. To be admitted by the bouncers you have to be on the list. They lend a sense of propriety to an establishment.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Town Hall
March 15 | Review by Diane Spodarek

Chaplinoperas is the title by British composer Benedict Mason for the music he created in 1988 to be played with the projection of three Charlie Chaplin films. It was performed on the last night of the Festival at the Town Hall by Stroma, a New Zealand chamber music ensemble with players from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and other freelance New Zealand players. The conductor was Hamish McKeich, who (according to the programme notes) is “…A rising star of the music world… works regularly in Australia and Europe and conducts all the major orchestras in New Zealand.” The films were projected on a large screen above the ensemble: Easy Street (1916), The Immigrant and The Adventurer (1917). It took me back to the college parties I attended where people would drink beer and watch TV with the sound off and the stereo on. The coincidences of random, loud rock and roll with the images were always amazing. The point of watching, beyond the obvious hilarity of it, was to experience the unknown, to groove to the unexpected. It was all very immediate and spontaneous.

Led by the precocious front-man Zach Condon, Beirut are causing a ruckus within both the so-called “indie” and “world music” worlds. They’ve been in New Zealand recently, playing two shows in Auckland and Wellington, and playing at Taranaki’s WOMAD festival. BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM catches up with Perrin Cloutier and Paul Collins from the band, just after they played their second show at WOMAD.

O2 Arena, London
February 16 | Reviewed by Ewan Kingston

I’VE ALWAYS been a fan of the Smashing Pumpkins. Early in their career, they showed ability to make music that conveys sadness, anger and passion all at once. Twenty years after they formed, I hunted down standing tickets for the sold-out concert and walked into London’s massive O2 arena wondering if they could still do it.

Cross Street Studios, Auckland
March 13 | Reviewed by Imogen Neale

A COMMON SIGHT?

People walking out of a theatre building, chin pressed into their collar bones, their hand/s in their hair (scratching or not) and their eyes glazed in introspection (for that little clue that would set the truth free).

Bowl of Brooklands, New Plymouth
March 14-16 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

“I WAS TOLD that I was too fat, too short, too old, too black to be a famous singer”. It took a much-rejected singer and her cooler than cool (i.e. ice cold) band to blow a languid, hazy WOMAD Festival up, and in the process stunned a crowd into dancing like maniacs, a crowd that had previously been comfortable sitting back and soaking up the sounds. This year’s Festival lacked the energy that last year’s had, probably owing to the fact it was wet and cold last year so everyone had no option but to dance. It wasn’t as full as previous concerts, but it showed that it’s well worth putting on the festival every year. And while last year had a seemingly neverending cavalcade of breathtaking performances, this year was a bit more sedate. Of course, with a festival where flowery prints and comfortable pants abound, and the cigarettes are more likely to be filled with New Zealand-made produce (a good potential for the Buy NZ campaign?), you’d expect quiet lounging around in the stunning Bowl of Brooklands. But thanks to the best efforts of Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, and others, WOMAD continues to be the best chance New Zealanders can see the brilliant music from around the world, and have a good time doing so.

San Francisco Bathhouse
March 15 | Reviewed by Marcus McShane

ALTHOUGH I only bought The Shepherd’s Dog (Iron & Wine’s latest album) a few days ago I’ve had Our Endless Numbered Days for a long time, and I spent a good two months last year obsessing over it. Knowing how late most San Francisco Bathhouse shows start I didn’t turn up until after ten, and so only had twenty minutes of the standing-around-looking-for-a-place-to-sit before Sam Beam came onstage and picked up his guitar, looking just as scruffy and hairy as fine guitarists should. He looks very much like a young Will Oldham. And the music is beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. It’s amazing how many rich sounds can be made with two voices, an acoustic guitar, and an effects pedal.

By Duncan Fallowell
Profile Books, NZ$35 | Reviewed by Amy Brown

GOOD TRAVEL writing includes both autobiography and review. Before properly judging observations, you have to know something about the observer. Having finished Going as far as I can, I feel like I know Duncan Fallowell quite well. He is an educated, wealthy, gay Londoner. He can talk about Henry James, Hutch, architecture, wine and religion. He will share his doggerel verse, his racial generalisations and details of his sexual encounters without inhibition. He is polite, but not prudish; louche, but not sleazy; an aesthete and a hedonist, but not exactly a snob. At least, this is how he came across, to me, in his account of his journey through our country.

NZ Arts Festival, Writers & Readers Week
March 15 | Reviewed by Gemma Freeman

FOR WHAT IS possibly the most valuable prize for emerging writers in the world, and definitely the largest literary prize in New Zealand, the Embassy Theatre was embarassingly empty on Saturday evening as we gathered to hear readings by the nominees for the biennial $65,000 Prize in Modern Letters. If you subtract family and friends of each of the six nominees, that only leaves a handful of people there with an unbiased interest in upcoming New Zealand literature. Having seen the theatre completely packed throughout the week, it concerned me that this exclusively New Zealand line-up was not as appealing as other events. The group’s relative inexperience certainly did not mean a lack of quality: these six have had nothing less than glowing reviews, and the Prize hardly has a history of awarding duds (past winners are Catherine Chidgey, Glenn Colquhoun and Carl Shuker).

Circa Theatre
March 1-29 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

THE LIGHTS fade up on a young guy in stonewash jeans reading a Mario Puzo novel. He prowls restlessly around his modern apartment. This is Dennis Ziegler, an arrogant ‘trust fund baby’ in 1980s New York. The buzzer goes – it is his “friend” Warren Straub, another rich kid with low self esteem. He’s had a fight with his Dad, who’s kicked him out. In a moment of impulsive bravado he’s stolen $15,000 his father just happened to have lying about – for nefarious purposes no doubt. The rights or wrongs of stealing the money never really factor into Dennis and Warren’s conversations about the cash. Instead they debate what to do with it – finally settling on a plan that will entice Jessica, the object of Warren’s desire, over to Dennis’s apartment. The characters typify an era in which the young were encouraged to abandon values and loyalties in favour of getting ahead. They are selfish, aimless and confused.

By Fiona Kidman
Random House, NZ$35 | Reviewed by Anne Brown

IN A NZ Listener interview with Dame Fiona Kidman in 2005, Denis Welch concluded by asking her whether there would be a sequel to her Montana Book Award-winning novel, The Captive Wife. Kidman replied that she felt at her age she didn’t have the time left to do the research involved in another historical novel.

Andrew Ross Photographs
VUP, NZ$55 | Reviewed by Andy Palmer

REVIEWING this book puts me in a bit of a bind. I’ve known Andrew Ross (the artist and his art) for years, we exhibit at the same gallery (which is also co-publisher of this book), and I’ve followed the progress of this book for as long as there’s been progress. Consequently I may be a tad biased in my views. Fortunately this is a first-rate publication, and one that should introduce Ross’s work to a much deserved wider audience.

NZ Arts Festival, Writers & Readers Week
March 14 | Reviewed by Joan Fleming

“HE BEGAN as a prodigy, and went on to become a virtuoso.” In the world of poetry, Paul Muldoon is about as close as you can get to a superstar. Poetry editor of the New Yorker, winner of countless honours and awards, and (it’s been said) owner of the most electric guitars of any major poet, Muldoon’s stage presence is practiced and easy. Yet he’s humble, gracious, gentle – and seems like a genuinely nice guy.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Pacific Blue Festival Club
March 12-13 | Reviewed by Diane Spodarek

The Songs of Kurt Weill opened with the familiar notes from ‘Mack the Knife,’ played by a trombone. Soon a voice singing in German filled the space followed by clarinet, banjo, bass and drums, layering the song, bringing it louder and louder to a full house at the Pacific Blue Festival Club.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, TSB Arena
March 13-16 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

THE POWERFUL imagery of Honour Bound does not fade until long after the lights and sound-scape have died down, and the screes of viewers have left the space of TSB Arena. With this physical, mediated theatre piece The Sydney Opera House and Malthouse Theatre have together turned a tightly tuned, emotive and gripping work in which the sense of injustice is tangible, and nobody is exempted from its driven touch.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, St James Theatre
March 12-15 | Reviewed by Shruti Navathe

TERO SAARINEN’s Borrowed Light opened at the St James Theatre on March 12 as part of this year’s International Arts Festival. The performance began with a sole dancer moving in silence and light as a community of singers, dancers and audience looked on from darkness. This set the mood of stark and eerie contrasts – a mood that underpinned the movements of the dancers, which were either airy and light or heavy and uncomfortable.

JAMES BROWN sounds out Canadian avante-garde poet Christian Bök, guest at this year’s Writers and Readers Week during the New Zealand International Arts Festival.

During Writers and Readers Week at the New Zealand International Arts Festival, AMY BROWN talks to Caribbean novelist and short-story writer, Mayra Montero about morals, fear, translation and la verdad de la mentira.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Downstage Theatre
March 8-16 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

Where We Once Belonged is a stunning and haunting adaptation of Sia Figiel’s 1994 novel of the life (and death) of 1970s Samoa. Adaptor Dave Armstrong has taken segments of the novel to form a rich and mesmerising play; and one which retains the novel’s key elements. This Auckland Theatre Company/International Arts Festival co-production brings a timely, insightful and above all very funny exploration of the lives of young people growing up in Samoa. It gives voice to the choking influence of Western materialism, the legacy of colonialism and the fading memories of the ‘we’ past.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Michael Fowler Centre
March 9 | Reviewed by Marcus McShane

LEONARD COHEN is (along with Bob Dylan) a man who practically created the singer/songwriter genre in the 60s. Phillip Glass is about as legendary as you can get in classical music without dying. They are two artists who have created a whole canon of work around themselves. So my expectations of any collaboration between the two are huge. After all at this stage in their careers they can do what the hell they like. Which is the sense you get from Book Of Longing. Experimental, but experimenting with the kind of budget normally reserved for the construction industry.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Soundings Theatre
March 6-16 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

The Dentist’s Chair marks a change in style for the Indian Ink Theatre Company. Their trademark mask work is still present, although not for all characters, but rather than focusing on Indian figures, the characters are ethnically nondescript. There are no heroes in the story, indeed, the philosophy of the piece is that “We can learn as much from our heroes as our monsters”. Instead the play focuses on a pitiable dentist who has lost his nerve, Albert Southwick, and his nagging wife and practice assistant, Judy. Albert is fascinated with dentist related history, however remotely related. This retrospectively accounts for the rather delightfully bizarre opening of the play – two characters in period costume with thick Southern American lower class accents enter trying to sell the audience fruit. They are William Kemmler and his fiancée Tilly. They banter with the audience on stage light-heartedly until William murders Tilly with an axe for being unfaithful. This results in him being the first man to go to the electric hair, apparently invented by a dentist, rather than hung. A quick scene change reveals Albert has been telling this tale to a petrified patient in the chair.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Opera House
March 10-16 | Reviewed by Shruti Navathe

ONE OF THE first things that caught my attention as I took my seat at the opening performance of Traces at The Opera house, Wellington was the image projected behind the stage set up. I’d noticed a video camera with some trepidation as I entered the hall (I have an abiding dislike of CCTVs) and it was comforting to realise that the camera was projecting onto the screen inside as part of the performance, and not as part of Kerry Prendergast’s panoptic plan to keep the riff-raff out of the festival.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Michael Fowler Centre
March 7-9 | Reviewed by Shruti Navathe

I ARRIVED at the opening performance of Chunky Move’s Glow – part of this year’s dance contribution to the New Zealand International Arts Festival – intrigued and prepared to be impressed. Wonderfully, I was not disappointed. Glow is a highly successful exploration of the relationship between matter; in this case a sole organic being, and a completely inorganic environment. Chunky Move mines this relationship with depth and subtlety.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Pacific Blue Festival Club
March 4-7 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

YOU KNOW you have been at a great gig when the announcement that “This will be our last song” meets with distressed cries of “No!” Another sign is the audience blissfully singing along en masse to the last song. And yet another is wanting write the word “Awesome” 300 times over as your review of the gig. Awesome would sum up my night at Nouvelle Vague, but I’ll try to elaborate.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Soundings Theatre
Feb 23/28; Mar 1/3/8 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

Lifeboat tells the inspirational story of survival of two very different girls after the boat that is evacuating them from Britain in World War II sinks after being torpedoed by the Germans. The play is based on the real life story of Bess Walder and Beth Cummings and the voyage of the boat the City of Benares that departed Liverpool bound for Canada on the 13th of September 1940. It is a tribute to their survival and also to the passengers who lost their lives (248 of the 406 passengers and crew, including 77 of the 90 children on board). The sinking of the boat is an important historical event in the context of WWII, as the operation of the Children’s Overseas Resettlement Board was immediately ceased after it sank. However, in compiling this story, Nicola McCartney has focused on the personal insights of Bess and Beth to offer a unique perspective on both the war and the tragedy.

By Angela Andrews
VUP, NZ$25 | Reviewed by Andy Armitage

Echolocation is an apt title for Angela Andrew’s impressive first book in that her quiet poems demand patient attention to detect their deeply held resonances. These modest poems reward re-reading and soon reverberate outside their specificity.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Town Hall
March 5 | Reviewed by Peter Bisley

THE CHAMBER musicians Absolute Ensemble and their conductor Kristjan Järvi had an impressive reputation before them as they came to perform in the 2008 New Zealand International Arts Festival. “Järvi has been hailed by The New York Times as ‘a kinetic force on the podium, like Leonard Bernstein reborn,’” the program gushes. The concert began with an arrangement of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, and while tolerable for its nominal proficiency, the performance lacked flair and there was little to compensate for the loss of the full orchestral sound to an ensemble one tenth the intended size. Happy to accept this as a prelude to the reforged drama of Mahler’s fourth symphony for small ensemble, I was inexplicably confronted with the aural offence of the worst type of synth-pad keyboard solo: this, apparently, was a recording of a live solo by the late great jazz fusion pianist Joe Zawinul. Indeed, the man is undoubtedly a legend of jazz fusion, but his Ballad for 2 was so far out of context in a chamber music concert, and so isolated from the man’s presence. When the ensemble came in they had no groove, nor was there any of the intimate “interplay between the man who was and the music that lives on,” as the program notes predicted there might be. Rather, there was technically proficient but lifeless score reading of notated faux-impromptu jazzy lines. There was little sense of ensemble except for that gained through the individual musicians occasionally glancing up at Järvi, a graceful conductor who was often let down as the hub of a mangled wheel aimlessly spins without its spokes.

The Basement (fmr. Silo)
March 6-9 | Reviewed by Imogen Neale

WHAT IS LOVE? Or more to the contemporary point, what is LUV?

Is it simply a quick way to txt, msn, pxt or post, ‘love’?

Perhaps.

Fringe 2008, Good Luck Bar
Feb 24-29 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

MEL DODGE’s solo piece for the Fringe centres around a character called Sophie, a bar manager and modern day romantic and a diverse range of characters (all played by Dodge). Interspersed with scenes set in the bar where Sophie works (Good Luck forms a good back drop for this) are stylised scenes in which Dodge mimes putting on a pair of long gloves (a Jane Austen lady preparing for a ball? A heart surgeon preparing for surgery?) and also divines audience member’s romantic history in a BBC style accent, potentially indicating she is channelling Austen herself. There are references to the past and Austen’s characters, such as when a Mr Darcy turns out to be a Mr Wickham, and also to current dating practices, such as facebooking your exes.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM interviews Nouvelle Vague co-founder Olivier Libaux, in Wellington with the band for a quartet of sell-out shows at the New Zealand International Arts Festival.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Pacific Blue Festival Club
Feb 27 | Reviewed by Tim G

THE NAME Dave Dobbyn almost induces a collective groan. The only time anyone will ever admit to really knowing his music is when it’s 3am, you’re with old school friends, you’re marinated in booze and you’re at one of those bars you really shouldn’t be, and no matter if it’s ‘Be mine tonight’ or ‘Slice of Heaven’, you know it, every word, every change in pitch. The Kiwi hit maker almost personifies cultural cringe. He’s been every Kiwi rock star cliché, the pub rocker, did a movie soundtrack for a loveable Kiwi cartoon, donated one of his songs to the militant patriots who couldn’t come to grips with the loss of the America’s Cup, and most recently become a moral social crusader. Yet he battles on and manages to produce songs which tug at Kiwis ‘heart strings.’ He is like the ginger ‘Uncle’ of Kiwi music. He’s a good guy, a bit dorky; reminds you of your 80s childhood, but you can’t remember a time when he wasn’t around.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Circa Theatre
Feb 23-May 3 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

ROGER HALL’s Who Wants to be 100?, is apparently one of the “fastest selling plays” in New Zealand’s history. An extremely depressing fact this; but at least the play is getting people into theatres. Director Ross Jolly invites us to consider whether this is Hall’s “best play yet, his funniest, darkest comedy;” and if the majority answer is yes then at least from Who Wants to be 100? we can glean a simple and effective formula of mass appeal. Make bawdy jokes, talk about poos, and keep the cast firmly rooted in one of the apparently dying bastions of the male domain; while highlighting and keenly reinforcing topical cultural issues.

San Francisco Bathhouse
March 6 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

WILL SHEFF announced to the crowd as soon as he entered on stage with considerable frustration that Hillary Clinton won primaries in Ohio and Texas. He then cut loose with all his vitriol onto a brutal version of the fragile ‘The President’s Dead’. And never lost that intensity. Sheff clutched that microphone like it was a life-jacket, singing as if someone had a gun to his head, with his words flowing, lucid and cutting, towards the awestruck audience. His voice was even more impressive live, powerful, resonant, and given the power of an immense live band behind him, it was quite something. I’ve rarely seen a set that was so perfectly timed, so perfectly in control of its dynamics and its structure. The lulls, the segues, the explosions, they were all delivered so damn brilliantly. I have a propensity for a wayward and all-too-frequent use of superlatives, but Okkervil River’s was one of the best live performances I think I may have ever seen. And I emphasise the word “ever”.

Ben Kemp’s new album, Inside the Un-cut Apple, releases this March to coincide with his band Uminari’s tour of New Zealand. BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM talks to the Tokyo-based ex-pat about culture and music.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, St James Theatre
March 4-5 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

Bro’Town Live on Stage proudly proclaims itself the “world’s first reality stage show documentary… about a cartoon!” And this title is more than apt; the show is a mix of cross-genre, cartoon-like, real life TV commentary; narrated principally by creators David Fane and Oscar Kightley, with fellow Naked Samoans Mario Gaoa and Shimpal Lelisi as comedic support. Despite a low energy performance and an obvious lack of preparation (the Live on Stage part meant script-in-hand and missed cues) the Bro’Town story gained copious laughter and encouragement from the audience, and was very high in feel-good factor.

BATS Theatre
March 1-8 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst

PHILIP Braithwaite’s latest play imagines the retelling of an old biblical legend full of adultery, prophecy and dependence on spiritual guidance. The programme notes explain that it ‘questions our sense of values, and asks whether there is such a thing as justice.’

Blackbird examines the confrontation of Ray by Una fifteen years after their affair. This would be unremarkable, except Una is 27 now and Ray (formerly known as Peter) is 55 – she was 12 when they were ‘lovers’. The play takes place in a rubbish littered work place lunchroom over a tense 90 minutes. It was performed last year in Circa Two by Rachel Foreman and Nick Blake and was directed by Jane Waddell. New Zealand International Arts Festival features the Sydney Theatre Company’s production, with Peter Kowitz playing Ray and Paula Arundell playing Una, directed by STC’s new artistic director, Cate Blanchett, fresh from their nine week sell-out season in Sydney before they tour further a field. HELEN SIMS spoke to actor Peter Kowitz about the challenges the play presents and other matters ahead of reviewing the show.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, The Opera House
March 2-5 | Reviewed by Raphael Matto

I’LL START by saying that I’ve never been to The Opera before.

Though I’ll avoid talking about Opera itself, which baffles me in a warm fuzzy kind of way, I will pass on this advice for first-timers: dress in layers, bring a paper fan (it’s gets hot!), buy a program – or at least steal a program from your neighbor while she’s peeing at halftime – and read the synopsis. Finally, listen closely to veteran opera-goers (those are the guys who come by themselves). You can parrot them when your friends ask, “So what was it about?”

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Pacific Blue Festival Club
March 1-3 | Reviewed by Tim G

TONIGHT the Pacific Blue Tent in Frank Kitts Park resembled a setting of the musicians’ native County Clare. The rain poured as it oft do in the Emerald Islands, and the essence of Eire resonated as Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill brought not only their spin on Celtic music, but an Irish charm to Wellington. The rain persisted, the alcohol flowed, and despite this, spirits were high and the best Celtic fiddle player in the world entertained. Who would have known we were in County Clare tonight?

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Wellington Town Hall
Feb 28 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

I WAS CLOSE to not eating for two weeks so I could go see Ornette Coleman. However, as I needed food, I ended up seeing The Bad Plus instead. They’re obviously not the provocateurs, innovators, or in the same genius league as Coleman but then very few people are. Instead, they were fun, lively, and very endearing, almost masking their cleverness with goofy geekiness. It was the kind of virtuouso performances you’d expect from jazz performers, the music being told with verve and charm.

Fringe 2008, Toi Poneke Wgtn Arts Centre
Feb 28-March 1 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst

Art From Whoa to Go is like going to a slide show at your favourite eccentric aunt’s. It’s all a bit weird, but her enthusiasm for her subject is infectious, even if you haven’t got a clue what she’s talking about.

Edited by Siobhan Harvey
JAAM Publishing Collective, $16 | Reviewed by Amy Brown

LITERARY journals often have a title or tagline, such as “new New Zealand writing”, “the garden party” or “open house”, which suggests a cohering theme for the collection. JAAM 25 doesn’t use this device. In the introduction, Siobhan Harvey, the editor, lets quotations from Novalis and Charles Simic help her reach a loose definition of what poetry (and, indeed, fiction) might be. Novalis says, “Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason”, and Simic calls it “an orphan of silence”. Much of the work Harvey has chosen for this collection could be seen to fall under these rather poetic definitions.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Pacific Blue Festival Club
Feb 28-29 | Reviewed by Diane Spodarek

Tama Tu Tama Ora performed popular Maori songs from the 70s, 80s and 90s to an enthusiastic audience, many who were familiar with the songs. In between songs, an MC read from a clipboard facts and dates about Maori history, repeating that the songs are an expression of Maori anger, pride, protest, grief, optimism and hope. I don’t know about the anger part; the musicians looked like they were having far too much fun.

Auckland Town Hall, THE EDGE
March 1-6 | Reviewed by Renee Liang

Beyond the Blue is a devised theatre piece that takes “courage as the initial starting point”. It certainly doesn’t end there. As a piece of physical theatre, it is impressive: twelve bodies in constant motion, moving through a combination of improvisation, acrobatics, dance and ensemble singing for over an hour. Even for trained dancers this would take stamina; we are told that young actresses that make up the cast are, for the most part, on their first real theatre outing. And they are young: for the most part these women are under twenty, and some are still at school.

NZ Arts Festival 2008, Downstage Theatre
Feb 27-March 4 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

DESCRIBED as a play “set amidst the maelstrom of the 1981 Springbok Tour,” Te Karakia is more of an exploration of personal relations, an uncovering of the complexities of personal politics and a view of the formative influences on the lives of New Zealanders than an overtly political depiction of the rugby tour. The dominance of the theme of Christianity is perhaps more evident than that of rugby: the moment you enter the space of Downstage you are struck by the sight of three large crosses. These double as rough telephone poles to place and date the play in rural 1980s New Zealand, but their religious overtones are clear. A symbolic, gravel-filled line which splits the length of the stage is the only immediate hint at the presence of divisive Springbok Tour in the lives of the characters on stage.

Jack Fortune abandons his post as a cast member of Black Watch – an explosive New Zealand International Arts Festival production about Iraq-deployed soldiers under Scotland’s legendary 300-year-old regiment – to talk to MELODY NIXON about the play and its theatre of war.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM trawls the local music calendar to bring us the month’s best gigs. This March: Cat Power, Okkervil River, Ben Kemp + Uminari, Cheap as Chips, Beirut, Iron & Wine, WOMAD, Bluesfest, Wilco, Dudley Benson.