Comedy Festival 2008, Auckland Town Hall
April 29-May 3 | Reviewed by Jacob Powell

Mark Watson is an interesting blend of manic energy and nervous awkwardness. All gangly limbs and eager looks, one moment he’s spinning lines so fast he’s approaching the speed of sound, the next he has paused; tentatively eyeing his audience like an embarrassed child. Thankfully the overall effect is ultimately endearing and provides a good launching platform for his free-form story telling and adlibbing.

Comedy Festival 2008, SkyCity Theatre
April 29-May 3 | Reviewed by Darren Bevan

“You’ll be none the wiser by the end of the night.” —Jimeoin.

You have to admire that kind of honesty – and being brutally frank by the time the Irishman left the stage I was none the wiser – although I did realise that all of the idiosyncracies and absurdities that were mentioned throughout his performance, some of them I did actually identify with.

Comedy Festival 2008, The Classic; San Francisco Bathhouse
April 19-May 3; 6-10 | Reviewed by Darren Bevan

YOU HAVE to admire an international comedian who still does his own opening lights show and introduction – although with Ben Hurley you sense it’s more from necessity than desire. And yet, as Ben made his way to the corner of the Classic Upstairs (“If you don’t like me, there’s nowhere for me to go” he remarked early on) there was a feeling he could take on anyone – and anything.

Comedy Festival 2008, Auckland Town Hall
April 23-26 | Reviewed by Darren Bevan

YES, he’s Dave and the only one actually representing the Flight of the Conchords phenomenon at this year’s Comedy Festival. And yet, Arj Barker is very dissimilar to his TV persona – preferring instead to head off on slightly surreal flights of fancy and weird tangents which actually make a lot of sense.

Comedy Festival 2008, BATS Theatre; The Classic
April 22-26; 29-May 3 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

Rubber Turkey is a strange play to be part of the Comedy Festival as it is incredibly dark at its heart. Yet it is also the perfect play for the festival too – it is genuinely funny in parts and shines an interrogatory light upon what makes us laugh. Coming from the pen of a young writer, Eli Kent, who also directs, it is incredibly intelligent and astute, and as much of a “eulogy” for lost innocence as a 20 year old is capable of producing.

Downstage Theatre
March 26-April 19 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

Marilyn: Forever Blonde captures Marilyn Monroe as her star is beginning to fade. A voice over tells us it is 1962 and Monroe has turned up to a photo shoot upset and wanting to share the details of her life following the collapse of her third marriage and filming on her latest movie. She is both candid and coy as she relates her story, “in her own words” as the programme proclaims, as well as singing some of her famous songs.

Comedy Festival 2008, San Francisco Bathhouse
April 22-26 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst

THE BRITISH press from The Financial Times to The Sun have referred to Janey Godley as ‘the female Billy Connolly’. It’s easy to see why. She is uncompromising; she came from a tough background in Shettleston, Glasgow, where life expectancy is 55 – it’s 65 in Baghdad – and she reveres the oddball, finding comedy in the darkest of situations.

Comedy Festival 2008, Herald Theatre
April 22-26 | Reviewed by Jacob Powell

FUSING musical comedy, classic stand-up, one-liners, and a little bit of improv, Dublin’s David O’Doherty crafts a show that consistently had me at least smirking or smiling when I wasn’t outright laughing. After pleasantly mocking the audience, himself, and even the venue in his opening address, O’Doherty spent the rest of the evening erratically jumping from topic to topic as the mood took him. Despite this lack of cohesive flow in his delivery he still put us all at our ease and kept us with him (or at least trying to catch up with him) the whole of the show.

Comedy Festival 2008, San Francisco Bathhouse
April 21 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst

THIS dysfunctional ‘family band’ from Corstophine, Dunedin brings an original act to the New Zealand International Comedy Festival with their charity gala to raise money to send a South Island band of their choosing overseas. The four-piece band comprises Gary (Gareth Williams) on keyboards; Miri (Miriama Ketu) on guitar and fiddle; Arty (Arthur Meek) on lead guitar and Benny (Ben Hutchison) on bass. They are not bad musicians, as they range through a variety of pop and country-style music, even employing a tambourine in an over-zealous fake religious song, and they are certainly talented singers; some of those four –part harmonies are excellent.

Comedy Festival 2008, Opera House
April 20 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst

First Laughs kicked off the Comedy Festival in Wellington at the Opera House which is a great and salubrious venue, despite John Fothergill remarking he had never played in a ‘satanic wedding cake’ before. Dai Henwood hosted the evening, delivering some very entertaining comedy patter of his own and introducing the fourteen acts, who each had about ten minutes to give a sample of their act.

Comedy Festival 2008, The Classic
April 19-May 10 | Reviewed by Darren Bevan

I REMEMBER Paul Tonkinson from my student days while back in the UK – he was a big part of a student hangover show on a Sunday morning and was a star in the rising then. So to find him still on the scene some 17 or so years later is not really a surprise – and to see him winning awards is easily comprehended after seeing his opening show at the Classic.

Te Karanga, K’Rd Auckland
April 10, 17 | Reviewed by Renee Liang (Contains Spoilers)

“POISONOUS people taint situations; they leave a residue of poison wherever they go,” says Claire Van Beek, the writer and director of this new Kiwi play, which had its world premiere last week. Dead Meat explores three types of poisonous relationships: those of family in a failing country farm; those of workplaces in (appropriately) a small-town butcher’s shop; and finally, those experienced by a couple at the end of their lives. It is really three separate short plays, linked (perhaps tenuously) by two common characters.

Te Karanga, K’Rd Auckland
April 5 | Reviewed by Renee Liang

ALTHOUGH not as famous nor as Pulitzer-prize winning as his other plays, Edward Albee’s The Play About the Baby pulls his trademark psychological punch. It’s a classic black box play: for most of the story the audience is kept on tenterhooks wondering what will happen next, and what is really happening. Some audience members don’t like to be kept dangling over an uncertain dramatic precipice; I personally loved every minute of it.

Auckland Town Hall, THE EDGE
March 27-April 19 | Reviewed by Renee Liang

THIS PLAY has been adapted from Samoan writer Sia Figiel’s award winning coming-of-age story, set in a Samoan village in the 1970’s. Entering the modified space of the Auckland Town Hall, one has an immediate sense of expectation. The normally sedate Concert Chamber has been transformed with stadium seating into something that resembles a boxing arena, with rows of audience members facing each other across a platform stage. As the five cast members enter singing and dressed in white, the stage shimmers into light. It’s a magical entrance.