From February 2010, The Lumière Reader will publish from its all-new website. This existing website will remain online in an archival capacity until we relocate its content.
BodegaAugust 29 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam
Beach House are like a summer sun-shower, their music a weird kind of euphoric melancholy. The Baltimore duo (plus one) kicked off their brief New Zealand visit with a show to a Bodega crowd who swam away with their visual music. It was a very good gig, given that the support was by two of New Zealand most under-appreciated talents. The show featured three artists for whom back-beats and driving rhythms were, for the most part, unnecessary. Instead their music floated up to the ceiling, for the audience to try and snatch down as it drifted past.
Circa TheatreAugust 2-30 | Reviewed by Helen Sims
Mammals takes a glimpse at the most ordinary but also unusual social grouping of the human species – the middle class family. Jane and Kev Hammersby have a comfortable home on the outskirts of London and 2 daughters, Jess and Betty. He works while she stays at home to care for the girls. But their seemingly happy marriage is about to be rocked and Jane in particular will be forced to re-examine the choices that have led to her current life.
By Charles Bock John Murray, NZ$39 | Reviewed by Sam Gaskin
CHARLES BOCK’s debut novel Beautiful Children follows the misfortunes of runaways and parents, sex peddlers and cartoonists, all damned and decomposing at different rates in the author’s home town. Welcome to fabulous Las Vegas.
Bock’s depiction of Vegas probably isn’t endorsed by the city’s tourism board. Over the course of one evening – the night 12-year-old Newell goes missing – we’re introduced to Daphne, a ketamine addict with a pregnant belly “the colour of uncooked bird”; a callous porn actor who injects something to harden his oversized cock; and a tragically suggestible stripper named Cheri Blossom who has flammable tits, “the dyed stubs of red wax and tiny red wicks … packed into her surgically hollowed-out nipple casings.”
Edited by V. Sherson, D. Cook, A. WilkinsonRamp Press/Wintec, NZ$48 | Reviewed by Andy Palmer
Baches of Raglan is the type of book I am surprised more educational institutions don’t attempt. Published by Ramp Press, Wintec’s in-house publishing label, the book is a collaboration between photography, journalism, and design students and tutors at the Waikato Institute of Technology.
Herald TheatreAug 14-Sept 7 | Reviewed by Renee Liang
FROM THE moment Ian Hughes steps on stage, he’s on intimate terms with us as an audience. That he manages to do this in the steeply raked space of the Herald Theatre is testament to his craft and of the stories he tells. There’s something friendly, even familiar, about Hughes. He looks like someone you’d see in the corner of the pub and not even notice. An ordinary bloke. But for 75 minutes, he has us entranced.
By Charlotte Simmonds VUP, NZ$25 | Reviewed by Sarah Jane Barnett
THE OPENING page of The World’s Fastest Flower tells me the Canadian Bunchberry Dogwood opens in 0.4 milliseconds and, because of its speed, has only been discovered since technology managed to catch up with nature. It would be easy to read Simmond's book with the same haste. The ninety pages are filled with lyric poems that build racing and addictive narratives. There are no sections to this book, no breaks or breathers for the reader and I wonder, if I ever have dinner with the author, if the evening would be spent in silent but rapt attention.
By John ReynoldsGodwit, NZ$69.95 | Reviewed by L M Wallace
MAN IN A HAT, planter of plants, word-fanatic, cloud-enthusiast, and the list goes on. John Reynolds has eluded definition in the New Zealand art world for almost thirty years. He appears to dance around lines of categorisation and expectation, and the book Certain Words Drawn is loud applause for this talent.
ALEXANDER BISLEY looks back on the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival in May.I WAS inspired by the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival; and not just by the courage, wit and grace of blind Canadian poet-memoirist Ryan Knighton (Cockeyed). He made my nebuliser-suckling hospitalisation, which messed with my Festival and my journalistic duty (after getting me a yellow card from splendifirous Japan a couple of days early), seem trivial.
Princess Theatre, Melbourne21 May-August 10 | Reviewed by Alexander Bisley
LUSH PICKINGS were on offer in Melbourne with this thoroughly accomplished production of Guys and Dolls. Broadway style through and through, this classic musical benefited from strong lead performances. Lisa McCune, aka Blue Heelers’ Maggie Doyle, was suitably cute as Salvation Army Mission Doll Sarah Brown. Big Shane Jacobson, aka Kenny’s eponymous hero, imported Kenny’s fulsome geniality to the role of hoodlum Nicely Nicely Johnson. Magda Szubanski, aka Kate ‘n’ Kim’s Sharon, brought the house down cross-dressing as fiercely rotund Chicago gangster Big Jule. In one highlight, Szubanski snappily insulted Jacobson, launching him into leading a showstopping rendition of ‘Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat’. Ian Stanlake rounded out a strong quartet as gambler Sky Masterson, who falls for Sarah Brown. As anticipated, Stanlake’s rendition of ‘Luck Be a Lady’, “A lady never leaves her escort/It isn’t fair, it isn’t nice/A lady doesn’t wander all over the room/And blow on some other guys dice”, was a highlight. Witty, sassy and energetically choreographed and performed, Guys and Dolls showed why it’s a trump.
ALEXANDER BISLEY peeks beneath the covers of the Christchurch Writers Festival, from September 4.NOT ONLY is Auckland inspiringly challenging Wellington’s Writers’ Festival, now Christchurch is having a go, too. The big draw is legendary war correspondent Robert Fisk (who will also appear at an Amnesty International event in Wellington). I interviewed this appealing tsunami of a man, synonymous with writing and fighting savvy, during his first visit to Wellington in 2006. “I think film has an unstoppable power to convince if it’s properly made. When I was at school I wanted to be a film critic,” he enthused.
BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM profiles the ‘chiaroscuro’ sound of the Willard Grant Conspiracy by way of its band leader and founding member, Robert Fisher.
ALEXANDRA FRASER lives in Grey Lynn. After some years teaching science she now has a quiet job in a doctor’s office. This gives her time to write poetry – her poems have appeared in magazines in Australia and New Zealand, including Landfall 215, JAAM 25, Poetrix and Catalyst – and to work on a children’s science fiction book.
RAECHEL REES has been versed into shape by poets Cliff Fell, Jessica Le Bas, Chris Price and Rachel Bush. She has had poetry published in the anthology Work and Space and was once featured in Coyote magazine but the whole article is in katakana so she doesn’t know if it was any good.
OSCAR TUNNICLIFF grew up in Newtown, Wellington. Now at the age of 21, he spends most of his time trying to grain something from observing the lives of strangers. He was influenced by Frank Sargeson and J. D. Salinger in the writing of ‘Country Pubs and Waiting Rooms’.
BATS TheatreJuly 31-August 9 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst
AT ONE POINT in this duologue (I hesitate to call it a play) one of the characters says to the other, ‘Let’s be nothing together’. If this is the theme for the night, they certainly succeed, as this is a stunning example of the parts being greater than the sum.
Summer 08/09July 18 | Reviewed by Thomasin Sleigh
Lela Jacobs unveiled her new collection of clothes on a wintery night in Wellington. It was dark and cold, and it felt like it had been raining for about three years. Mary Newton Gallery, where the launch was held, was packed with black-clad fashionistas eager to see the Jacobs’ new range and grab a glass of wine.
BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM trawls the local music calendar to bring us the month’s best gigs. This August: Renee-Louise Carafice, The Breeders, Stereo Total & JD Samson, Beach House w/Bachelorette.
Baltimore, visuals, and covering Daniel Johnston are on the agenda as Beach House’s Alex Scally chats to BRANNAVAN GNANALINGHAM ahead of two shows in New Zealand.
City Gallery WellingtonJuly 12-October 19 | Reviewed by Thomasin Sleigh
THE Fiona Hall show is cohesive. Cette exposition est cohérent. I went to the show with my friend for our French conversation class. Now botanical imagery, colonial ambition, and struggling to find the right French verb are inextricably bound together in my mind. Perhaps this isn’t such an irrelevant collection of ideas for a Fiona Hall exhibition. Force Field deals with the transference of information between the cultures, and as an English-born Zimbabwean living in New Zealand learning to speak French I am often amused by the complexities of my situation. C’est drôle, n’est pas?
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