The Basement (fmr. Silo)
July 23-August 1 | Reviewed by Renee Liang

“Every now and then… strangers break into our carefully arranged worlds, leaving us with no point of reference, no language, no understanding…” This is the program’s introduction to the closeted world devised by Medlock and Musgrove in their two plays, Spurs and Blinkers. Each two-hander play is complete in itself, but the link is the performers, and the fact that both involve horses.

Auckland Town Hall
July 19-26 | Reviewed by Renee Liang

“YOU DON’T find your own happiness,” they say, flashing smiles over confidently tossed shoulders. “You make it.” It is a statement that these eleven young women truly live. The Girls Show is about being young, about being a woman and about being an Aucklander – all things which have received bad press in the past, but which is celebrated in this pastiche of true stories.

Gryphon Theatre
July 16-26 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst

IN THE SPIRIT of full disclosure, I will admit that Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is my favourite ever book. Stagecraft’s latest production is Jane Eyre, but not as we know it. Polly Teale’s adaptation imagines Bertha Mason, the mad woman in the attic, as Jane’s alter ego, with implications that don’t always work, but Paul Kay’s direction masterfully highlights all the areas he wants us to notice.

Maidment Theatre
July 10-August 2 | Reviewed by Renee Liang

IN THIS revival of the classic play by Tennessee Williams, the action is transposed from a 1950’s Missipippi river estate to a modern day “hotel”, complete with designer furniture (promoted in the programme!), plastic walls and obeisant hotel staff. The reasons for this staging decision are never entirely justified, and I found myself confused as to which era this play was set - the dialogue and themes seeming to refer more to the original 1950’s while the set and soundtrack suggested a contemporary setting. Apart from this distraction, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof retains its original power as a study in human relationships, focussing on two pairs in particular: frigid Brick and his lustful wife Maggie, and Brick and his dying father, the patriarch Big Daddy.

GENE BANYARD. A 31 year old who resides in Wellington and holds a BA in Theatre and Film Studies. A poet who is cautiously entering the arena of prose. An actor, whose greatest influence is Antonin Artaud. A visionary who tends to look at the darker aspects of human nature and relationships. An artist who wants to give up his day job. A person who is happy to be alive.

KIRI PIAHANA WONG is a poet, editor and graduate student living in Albany, on Auckland’s North Shore. She has nearly completed a first collection of poetry, an exploration of the colours blue and yellow. Kiri is pleased to report that her husband (the boyfriend from her poem ‘Of Books and Bookcases’) has recently made her a lovely totara bookcase that holds approximately one quarter of her book collection.

Edited by Jean Anderson
VUP, NZ$30 | Reviewed by Amy Brown

THIS COLLECTION marked the opening of the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation at Victoria University in March. It gathers together, in alphabetical order according to their country of origin, 21 diverse stories and excerpts from novels, most of which are previously unpublished in English. Acting as a showcase for some of the lecturers in Victoria’s language schools, Been There, Read That! is a good way to sample recent, and in many cases unfamiliar, writing from 21 different countries.

Pico Iyer has been conversing with the Dalai Lama for 33 years. Iyer talks Tibet, faith and Martin Scorsese with Lumičre’s Associate Editor ALEXANDER BISLEY.

The Phoenix Foundation’s Samuel Flynn Scott talks acoustics and politics – both sounded out on his new album, Straight Answer Machine, with band Bunnies on Ponies – to BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM trawls the local music calendar to bring us the month’s best gigs. This July: Songs w/ Surf City, Samuel Flynn Scott & the B.O.P, Daysend w/ Subtract, Polka Dot Dot Dot, I Heart Hiroshima w/ Thought Creature and Little Pictures, Band of Horses, Mark Kozelek.