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.
Auckland Festival, Herald TheatreMarch 18-April 11 | Reviewed by Renee Liang
WHAT HAPPENS when you send actors out into the city to collect stories? Backstory is an illustration of the idea that the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. It’s a weaving together of stories that are not quite Auckland and not quite not Auckland, if you get what I mean. The result is a play that easily and deliciously embraces the universal.
BATS TheatreMarch 11-28 | Reviewed by Helen Sims
AH, teenage angst. I usually find it so funny. Mark Schultz’s treatment of it in A Brief History of Helen of Troy is so sharply observed that it is often hilarious. But substantial tragedy underpins the bratty behaviour of main character Charlotte, and the result is a rich production imbued with myth and pop culture, deftly delivered by Playground Collective and GladEye Productions.
Auckland FestivalMarch 5-22 | Reviewed by Alexander Bisley
ROBERT LEPAGE’s wondrous The Seven Streams of the River Ota was a transformative experience. The Andersen Project (Aotea Centre, March 19-22) demanded I got on a plane to the Auckland Festival and I highly doubt I will see better theatre this year.
Downstage TheatreMarch 16-21 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst
Strange Resting Places is a great name for this play, but it might just as well be called Strange Bedfellows. When a young Mãori soldier and an Italian are trapped together in a barn in Monte Cassino in 1944 with Germans outside, they really are the ‘salami in the panini’ and they must try to surmount their language and cultural differences to survive.
Auckland Festival, Herald TheatreMarch 13-April 10 | Reviewed by Renee Liang
TAKE the words of a 17th Century Spanish playwright, translate into English and then stage in a modern theatre setting with some up and coming young NZ actors and what do you get? Not quite a dream, but the play does make for an interesting night out.
Circa TheatreMarch 3-21 | Reviewed by Helen Sims
Hatch is a multilayered production – it is a period piece, a philosophical debate, an imaginative biographical portrait, masquerading as a town hall slide presentation to garner sympathy for the aggrieved Joseph Hatch. Hatch has been stripped of his license to produce oil on Macquarie Island – from penguins. According to Wikipedia (somewhat unreliable, I know) J Hatch & Co dispatched about two million penguins over nearly 30 years. It also notes what a persuasive and entertaining speaker he was – and this is definitely presented in this production. Roundly condemned by popular history, Hatch shows there are two sides to the story (as the title would seem to indicate).
Auckland FestivalMarch 5-22 | Reviewed by Renee Liang
The Arrival (The Civic, March 12-15) is much more than a theatrical adaptation of Shaun Tan’s award-winning graphic novel. Whilst remaining faithful to the story, its characters and even its images, this magical piece by Kate Parker and Julie Nolan has taken on a spirit of its own.
Auckland Fringe, The BasementMarch 10-13 | Reviewed by Renee Liang
SOLO PERFORMER, multicharacter pieces have a venerable tradition in this country, but seldom have they been performed with such in-your-face madcap energy as Morgana O’Reilly injects into this piece. A familiar face on the Auckland independent theatre scene, O’Reilly also reveals her talent for writing in this story about a down-but-definitely-not-out white trash family, the Hulmes. Annaleise is sixteen, pregnant and full of attitude while her brother Nathan is a gawky thirteen and trying to figure out... well, everything. The only thing he’s got sussed is how to annoy Annaleise. Older sister Emma is overseas in London, being taken for a ride by a variety of weirdos, while the older brother has trouble keeping his apparatus in his pants, with predictable results. Meanwhile, downtrodden mother Terri tries to entertain an old school friend, overacheiving Rachel, with hilarious results.
Auckland Fringe, The BasementMarch 7 | Reviewed by Ezra Low
THE FIRST THING one notices when stepping into the setting of Funky Oriental Beats is the mandatory red Chinese Lanterns. But that’s where the “oriental” connotations end. Guitar amps, DJ turntables, a bright yellow drumset bore no resemblance to the evening’s theme, save for the Asian, yet very diverse lineup.
Auckland FestivalMarch 5-22 | Reviewed by Renee Liang
BILLED as “an extraordinary evening of cross-cultural collaboration and innovation,” The Wide Alley (Festival Club, March 6-7) doesn’t quite live up to this promise, but instead resembles a comfortable jam session. This isn’t so bad. Being a fusion of jazz and traditional Chinese street music, it was always going to be more comfortable in a lounge than in the Festival Club which turned out to be too large a space for this gig.
Auckland FestivalMarch 5-22 | Reviewed by Renee Liang
AUCKLAND is known as a rainy city, but it put on a (mostly) sunny disposition for the start of Auckland Festival 2009. But there was no lack of challenging weather in events on offer. In Little Rain (March 3-28, City Art Rooms), one of the many visual arts exhibitions opening during the Festival, artists Cat Auburn and Karena Way use rain as a metaphor for how ideas and images pervade people’s lives. Rain creeps up almost without noticing, getting under the skin. In Rest Cure, featuring a life-size sculpture of a horse bound to a bed, Auburn explores ideas of Victorian repression and artifice and how this hides deeper issues such as freedom and independence. Way’s installation piece Paradise, as far as we know focuses a diffuse light on a white wall above a thin metal rail, encouraging us to escape beyond our own horizons. The other sculptural and photographic pieces work around these themes, while a soundscape created by Way from fragments of poetry, music and environmental noise lulls us into a false sense of security at first. Both artists seem to engage us lightly, drawing us into a world that seems innocent, almost flippant on the surface. But linger a while and the darkness becomes increasingly evident. The exhibition runs until March 28 and is part of the Artlink bus tour on March 21, when Way will invite members of the public to create a sound work with her.
Circa TheatreMarch 1-28 | Reviewed by Helen Sims
WHEN I HEARD that Circa had programmed Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll on its main stage I was both excited and worried. Excited because it’s great to see a full-scale production of a Stoppard play, and this one happens to be one of my favourites due to its setting and subject matter. I was worried because large scale productions at Circa have a tendency to rob plays of their dynamism. So I approached opening night with mixed feelings – were they borne out? Well, yes, I am sad to say they were. This is an incredibly challenging play, and despite some excellent performances by the cast, it doesn’t quite hit the mark.
Auckland Festival, Herald TheatreMarch 5-8 | Reviewed by Renee Liang
Te Karakia opens with a provocative premise: what if a couple, a Maori woman and a Pakeha man, were on opposite sides of the fence during the 1981 Springbok Tour? With the world today preoccupied by other threatening issues, it is easy to forget the impact 1981 had on our sense of nationhood. (Some of us were too young or uninformed to notice.) Cannily timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Tour, Te Karakia is a timely reminder of what happened. But it doesn’t quite go far enough in exploring the racial and colonial issues which lay at the heart of the Tour protest, and which still grumble on today.
Fringe 2009, BATS TheatreFeb 26-March 3 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon
IT’S NOT MUCH to ask of a theatre piece that it stimulate your imagination. In order to do this it might be suggestive, but add substance and story to that suggestion. Wolf’s Lair, by accomplished young director Willem Wassenaar and sterling performer Sophie Roberts, gives us plenty of suggestion, and plenty of symbolism, but fails to have a cohesive, interesting and worthwhile narrative to justify its flakiness. The unfortunate effect is that, in the end, Wolf’s Lair comes across as a whole lot of hollow pontification.
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