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.
San Francisco Bathhouse May 28 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam
THE SOUTHERLY winds that have purged Wellington over the last week got some respite at the San Francisco Bathhouse, where two local bands threw out melodies which danced around like fur coats. Both bands seem to be able to write catchy pop hooks in their sleep, throwing them out with the ease of drunken taunts. The bands were having considerable fun during their performance, and the audience threw themselves around on the dancefloor in support (particularly during Family Cactus’ set). The two bands are another sign that Wellington’s indie pop scene is as healthy as ever.
Conrad Keely chats to BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM about Trail of Dead’s latest album, The Century of Self, before the band touch down in New Zealand for two dates in early June.
VAUGHAN GUNSON lives in Hikurangi, Northland. He tries to juggle being an art teacher, writer, activist, unionist and parent of young children. More of his poems can be read at fallingawayfromblue.blogspot.com.
Comedy Festival 2009Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst
THREE KIWI women walk into a pub. No, it’s not a joke, but it is a great night of comedy. The Comediettes (Fringe Bar, May 19-23) are book-ended by Jim Stanton and Emma Olsen, with Sarah Harpur thrown into the middle for contrast. Both have a fairly dead-pan delivery and have managed to master the art of saying truly random statements with a straight face.
Mel Parsons discusses her moving debut album, Over My Shoulder, with BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM.
Comedy Festival 2009May 19-23 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon
NATALIE MEDLOCK and Dan Musgrove present us with a twinkling, silly and gorgeous hour of entertainment in their one couple show A Song for the Ugly Kids. As they state in their curiously childish programme, this show is about “the things in life that are a little bit wrong” – wrong, but totally funny, that is.
Edited by William McAloonTe Papa Press, NZ$130 | Reviewed by Andy Palmer
OVER the last few years a number of New Zealand museums and art galleries have released books detailing their collections. In Art at Te Papa, we have a mighty tome showing off the art collection of our national museum.
Like the recently reviewed Seen This Century this is essentially a list book, albeit on a larger scale. And as with any list book readers will probably disagree with those included and those excluded. Not being one with a great knowledge of the Te Papa art collection, a quick flick through suggests that this is a pretty comprehensive survey.
Comedy Festival 2009Reviewed by Sums Selvarajan
WATCHING Austen Found (The Drake, May 7-27) was more about appeasing my curiosity than anything else. Having been introduced to Jane Austen in college and not being that avid a fan of musicals, I was rather keen to see how an improv comedy take on the two would pan out. The intimate setting of The Drake along with the polished talents of ConArtist’s Penny Ashton, Greg Cooper, Lori Dungey, Stacyi Taylor, Nigel Burrows and Ross Devereux heralded more than a pleasant surprise. Swept into the fantastically fictional improvised world of “Greed & Generosity”, Jane Austen’s once-lost-but-now-found musical extravaganza, I was particularly impressed at how Andrew Herby-Bottom (Cooper) managed to work in Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Cecilia’ when disingenuously ballading about the protagonist, Ms Cecillia Gardener to her bon-bon crazed mother. The incongruous hilarity of the YMCA human-alphabets in a period ballroom dance also bear mention. Even if musicals and the country living in the Regency period isn’t your thing, Austin Found is well worth a watch. I for one think my aversion to musicals just might be cured.
Created by Fleur Elise NobleReviewed by Catherine Bisley
A TROUPE of puppets get their clumsy fingers onto a packet of cigarettes and some matches: Puppets + Fire = Trouble. Within minutes, 2-Dimensional Life of Her, a paper based show, roars up in flames. Projected flames, I should say. Black and white turns to colour and boy is the illusion powerful; I sat nervously eying the piles of paper strewn about the set, lest two dimensions leapt into a third. Concealing its own virtuosity with a beguiling improvised feel, this exceptional show explores the labyrinthine space between images.
BodegaMay 13 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam
WATCHING a band you’ve seen before and drooled over is a bit of a challenge. Hype can be, after all, cruel. It’s like watching something with a towel wrapped around your face. Endless comparisons waft in-between songs, images from previous experiences vie for prime attention. But the disappointment that it didn’t match up to last year’s incredible performance, is in hindsight pretty minor. To use a bad analogy, it’ll be like saying since Canada is not as big as Russia, Canada’s a small country. Will Sheff and co. put on another excellent show, showcasing the overdriven melodrama and good old-fashioned rock n roll that their live shows are legendary for. The intensity with which he sings is enough to show he’s not faking it, the amount of spit that bellows from his mouth (given his recent arrival from the US) would have had health officials concerned if they still cared about swine flu.
Circa TheatreApril 18-May 16 | Reviewed by Helen Sims
Year if the Rat is set on the Scottish Hebridean island of Jura in 1948 – when an ill George Orwell was finishing his novel 1984. A quick spot of googling reveals that 1948 was a year of the rat in the Chinese Zodiac – and so was 1984 and the last Chinese calendar year (February 2008 to January 2009). Despite his tuberculosis, Orwell has secluded himself in a damp and cold cottage to finish the novel – and it seems to have taken a toll on both his mental and physical wealth. His isolation is interrupted by a motley group of characters, both real and fictional.
Comedy Festival 2009Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst
Wayne Brady (Wellington Town Hall, May 4) performs cabaret shows in Las Vegas and you can tell. He’s slick, sharp and competent with his improvisation routines, comfortable patter and rhythm and blues songs. He is accompanied by a two-piece band and a couple of dancers, who are also slick, sharp, competent and male. This is a variety show.
Comedy Festival 2009, Michael Fowler CentreMay 9 | Reviewed by Alexander Bisley
NOTED 2005 television poll The Comedian’s Comedian gathered three hundred top comics’ all-time favourites. The excellent, versatile Steve Coogan clocked in at seventeen, ahead of Ricky Gervais, Charlie Chaplin and Larry David! There’s no doubting Wellington’s round of Steve Coogan Live was well entertaining, but I was a bit disappointed.
RENEE LIANG chats to Lori Dungey, member of improvisor group ConArtists and co-creator of Austen Found, which presents the ‘undiscovered works of Jane Austen’ at the Comedy Festival this week.
Finn Andrews tells BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM about the making of The Veils’ third album, Sun Gangs.
BATS Theatre; The Basement (Return Season)April 21-May 2; June 8-13 | Reviewed by Helen Sims
NEW PLAYWRIGHT Renee Liang’s* two hander Lantern subtly traverses a range of binaries: male vs female; East vs West; young vs old in a general exploration of a Chinese-New Zealand family. Clearly in the mould of Bare and Niu Sila (I read in the programme afterwards that these are explicitly cited as influences) the play at once seeks to be culturally specific and universal in its themes. It is perhaps not as humorous or energetic as its predecessors, but it is still an absorbing and at time intimate play.
Circa TheatreApril 29-May 7 | Reviewed by Helen Sims
I enjoyed The Intricate Art of Actually Caring so much in the Fringe that I was at something of a loss for words to describe it. I practically bullied people into going to see it. While the re-mounting of it at Downstage demonstrated that The Intricate Art is an excellent show, I felt something was missing from the original.
Circa TheatreApril 4-May 9 | Reviewed by Helen Sims
IT IS FUN to watch very good actors behave very badly. It is even better when they are doing so in a Yasmina Reza play – her incredibly sharp writing gives them so much to work with as the comfortable veneers of two middle class couples are peeled away. Although the play operates on an intellectual level (it’s often a battle of words and wits) it also has a primal undertone to it, as parents spring to defend their cubs. As with her previous plays, Life x 3 and Art, Reza takes a group of middles class characters and exposes them as no better than the battling playground savages they have met to discuss.
Comedy Festival 2009, Opera HouseMay 3 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst
ONCE AGAIN the New Zealand International Comedy Festival began in Wellington with First Laughs – a pick and mix of the talent to be showcased over the next three weeks. Local and international acts shared the stage at the Opera House competing for audience attention and hoping to woo them along to their forthcoming full-length show.
Downstage TheatreApril 29-May 7 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst
THE OTHER DAY some friends and I were pondering what we did to entertain ourselves before the techno-You Tube generation. We all admitted we made up skits which we forced our parents and elderly neighbours to come and see, as we performed song and dance routines, ‘gymnastics’ (at best a handstand and a forward roll) puppet shows, or, at a push, poetry.
Downstage TheatreApril 29-May 7 | Reviewed by Kate Blackhurst
THE OPENING gambit of A Most Outrageous Humbug sets the scene for the entire play. Artfully designed piles of books and sombre mood lighting (Marcus McShane) form the backdrop to Edgar Allan Poe’s parents’, Elizabeth (Jean Sergent) and David (Adam Donald) ferocious and theatrical argument which ends in tears and blood.
Enjoy Public GalleryApril 23-May 16 | Reviewed by Thomasin Sleigh
I WAS A bit late for John Ward Knox’s artist’s talk which was programmed promptly for 5:15 to 6:00pm, followed by the opening celebrations proper. It turned out that this was okay, because Knox didn’t speak linearly about the work in the show but tangentially and openly about thoughts and experiences which had occurred to him over the days leading up to the exhibition. The space of the artist’s talk was democratic, in the sense that it was opened up intellectually to chance encounters, private musings and loosely connected happenings. These thoughts could be tied tentatively to the actual physical work of Knox’s exhibition, or they could be left shifting between the physical and the philosophical – not quite catching fully on either.
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