It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel … like going to Pitt St theatre. Where Stray Theatre are putting on a play about the end of the world—Last Call—exploring what and whom one would find most important in our last hours.
MONSTER IN THE MAZE “re-imagines” in modern opera the legend of Theseus, the Minotaur, and the annual slaughter of Athenian youth to that monster. It evokes therein the tragedy of refugees forced afloat on the Mediterannean, of hostages imprisoned, of youth slaughtered in war and famine, and (perhaps) of unnamed hazards felt by youth from […]
Hot off its 2024 run on Broadway, MOTHER PLAY has us packing and unpacking — emotions, family relationships, sexual orientations, living arrangements —all of them. All are unpacked, laid out, and put back. As our narrator Martha admits: she’s getting good at it.
It’s wonderful to attend the first performance of a bold new play exploring mighty themes, delivered with such power one leaves the theatre reeling. Unfortunately, I have to report that Auckland Theatre Company’s new production Mary: The Birth of Frankenstein is not that play.
Eight years in the making, premiering last night, Sam Brooks’ new black comedy A Rich Man confronts us with an unusually complex menage a quatre confronting, and evading, some difficult choices about the future and their past.
William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar sometimes seems like it has a cast of thousands. Last time we saw it in Auckland it had at least twenty. Last night, at the Basement Theatre with two actors and one effective sound and lighting manager, it had a cast of two. It was remarkable.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has been done so many times in so many ways it has almost become a cliché. Almost. Almost. We’ve seen Baz Lurhmann do it as a brawl on Venice Beach, and Leonard Bernstein take it to a Westside Story. I’ve seen many different interpretations myself—but I’ve never seen it done as a […]
The Ballad of Briar Grant is a slightly surreal mystery with a story about personal change. It’s an ambitious piece of writing with some vignettes of brilliance, delivered confidently by director Lia Kelly and a theatre team who know what they’re about. And it does have a real ballad.
Saint Joan puts us into the mind of a young girl who led a revolution, to be betrayed by those her will and resolve had elevated. As the curtain closes on Flyleaf Theatre’s magnificently sparse re-creation of Bernard Shaw’s masterwork, an audience member behind us cried out, “Holy fuck!” I knew how she felt. We felt […]
OLEANNA at the Pumphouse Theatre throws us straight into a cauldron of miscommunication and abuse of power, the two actors delivering David Mamet’s hothouse of a play with nerve and aplomb.
