Margaret Austin’s first solo show Please Adjust Your G-String was an engaging collection of stories, poetry, and musical moments from her time working at the Moulin Rouge and later in London as a journalist. Much to the horror of her strait-laced Palmerston North family, she defied 1970s convention, split from her husband, refused to have babies, and headed off on her own path. Have You Seen My G-String? acts as a prequel, filling in the first of her European shenanigans before she landed at the world’s most famous cabaret.

Sashaying onto the stage in a sparkly, short lilac dress and matching scarf is a younger version of Austin with a dark 1960s hairdo. Her recollections begin with her days at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington as a student of English and philosophy and member of the Pooh Bear Club, claiming the old ‘Taj Mahal’ as an independent state. “You mustn’t do that”, she was frequently told, but that mantra was firmly cast out in Austin’s world.

We follow her to the summer of 1975 and Amsterdam, encountering women in red-lit windows for the first time. She starts writing poetry and we hear one of her early creations, sadly the only one in this show. Soon, she meets a dishwashing dancer who introduces her to a sex theatre where she auditions and successfully becomes a stripper. “I’m learning heaps!”, she delightfully declares as she regales us with tales of what happens on the stage of the Caress club.

After more great work stories, encounters with African men, and tidbits about her early days as a celebrity interviewer, the tone takes a sombre turn as Austin’s vulnerability comes to the fore. She courageously recounts her poignant three-year journey with depression and her unexpected rescue from it by a homeless man called Wayne.

As ever, Austin is a skilled and entertaining raconteur and it’s a privilege and pleasure to learn more about her adventures in life and love.

This evening pairs two large-scale choral works with unusually compelling origin stories; Mozart’s Requiem, commissioned anonymously and left unfinished at his death, alongside Christopher Tin’s To Shiver the Sky, a work brought to life through the largest Kickstarter campaign ever mounted to support a composer.

Mozart’s iconic and distinctive Requiem opens the concert. The opening movement is particularly strong, Orpheus Choir balancing the painful and uncertain yet soothing quality of this sacred mass for the dead. As always, the Lacrimosa is a highlight, its tenderness and intensity making for deeply affecting listening. The solo quartet, Emma Pearson (soprano), Charlotte Secker (alto), Ridge Ponini (tenor), and Robert Tucker (bass), work exceptionally well together, prioritising blend and ensemble over individual display.

Tin’s To Shiver the Sky shifts the sound world entirely. The work traces humanity’s enduring obsession with flight, charting our journey from imagined wings and myth to scientific discovery and space travel through a selection of historical texts. Drawing heavily on the language of film and video game scores, the work is unapologetically expansive and frequently sentimental. Yet its emotional directness proves surprisingly powerful. The voices of great figures such as Leonardo da Vinci in Sogno di Volare, and Copernicus in Astronomy, become suddenly and disarmingly accessible through Tin’s settings of their personal writings. Ponini is especially moving as the golden toned voice of Daedalus, father of Icarus, delivering a beautiful and dreadfully tragic lament that somehow evokes the beauty of open sea and sky.

Tin’s writing makes inventive use of the choir, deploying it in radically different roles across the work. The early-music-inflected Become Death, setting Sanskrit verses associated with Oppenheimer, is exhilarating and fills us with dread, its austere sound world brought to life by superb solo singing from within the choir. It is not all evenly successful; the final movement, based on John F. Kennedy’s iconic “We Choose to go to the Moon” speech, and featuring unapologetic Americana and a children’s choir, feels less authentic and undercuts the impact of what precedes it.

Even so, this is an ambitious, emotionally charged programme, performed with commitment and care, linked by two very different stories about how communities bring music into being.

At the Q&A screening of The Weed Eaters, directed by Callum Devlin, someone put their hand up and said, “Thanks, that was hilarious, beautiful, disgusting.”

The Weed Eaters is a Kiwi horror-comedy that already feels like an instant classic. Four friends go rural for New Year’s Eve and smoke a bunch of weed that gives them the munchies so bad they end up eating people.

A DIY project between some incredibly talented mates, the cast and crew consisted mostly of the same seven people: Alice May Connolly plays Jules and was the on-set caterer, co-writer, and producer, Samuel Austin plays Campbell and was cinematographer and gaffer – the overlaps go on and you might as well scrap the titles and call them a band. A band that created an exceptional film that rides the line between horrific and hilarious better than I think I’ve ever seen.

The script sits in the perfect register of four Kiwi drongos who are seriously stoned and maybe a little bit bored. The acting from Connolly, Annabel Kean (Charlie), Finnius Teppett (Brian), and Austin was outstanding – their ability to make the eating of a human body somehow erotic, grotesque, and funny is a mix I’m not sure I want to know the recipe for.

Like any good horror, each time it got dark outside you heard a groan from the audience. At one point I thought the film was so far down the horror end of the spectrum it couldn’t possibly bring the audience back to safety. Then there was another cracker, flippant remark and we were suddenly back in that happy place.

I doff my hat to the rhythm of the film. Devlin says that “comedy is all about… the pacing”, which Austin put down to their combined musical experience and history of creating music videos. In terms of the music, the soundtrack was impeccable, celebrating local indie artists and featuring a jazz score written and performed by Callum Passells, who somehow overlaid the scenes where human flesh is consumed with music that made the act appear surprisingly chic.

The film does what a lot try to do (not always succeeding): stretch the audience’s response across such a wide range of emotions that all you can do is squirm and laugh. And squirm and laugh we did.

If you ask me, hardly anything beats a good improv show, especially when it is also a whodunnit. Now imagine that, as a viewer, you get to not only watch the story but also influence its course. This is what happens at Wellington’s premier improv murder mystery show, Farce Onion, in which the audience is invited to shape the plot, choosing the location, the murder weapon, and even the victim. This Wednesday's performance features a cast of six improv geniuses – Dylan Hutton, Mo Munn, Austin Harrison, Nina Hogg, Tara McEntee, and Millie Osborne – ready to win the crowd.

The night starts as ominously as every good mystery should: the stage is dark and a single spotlight reveals a mysterious silhouette sitting in the center of the room, his face hidden by a newspaper that bears the headline Murder. This figure turns out to be the story’s detective (Hutton), who takes notes and desperately tries to solve a crime as it unfolds in real time. Throughout the night, a comically absurd story takes shape, featuring various characters who are as entertaining as they are suspicious. From a French artist dreaming about being an accountant (Harrison) to a dog-killing museum curator (Munn) and a grandmother-stepmother passionate about vaginal self-portraits and unfired ceramics (Hogg), the more bizarre the characters get, the funnier.

The cast is supported by two live musicians (Beans Wright and Isaac Thomas) who brilliantly adapt to the changing plot and underline each scene’s atmosphere. To change the course of the story, we are encouraged to participate by clapping or speaking. To my taste, there could be even greater audience involvement. However, the show is hilariously funny as it is, proven by the fact that the entire theatre is laughing out loud the whole way through.

Farce Onion truly is improv at its finest. I want to come back again and again. Keep an eye out for PopRox to experience their next performance yourself or take part in one of their improv workshops.

‘Twas the night of a cyclone, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. A rat, on the other hand…   

It’s already a coincidence that WITCH Music Theatre opened the Aotearoa premiere of Ride the Cyclone on the eve of Cyclone Vaianu. Consider the fact that the musical is narrated by a mechanical fortune-telling automaton called The Amazing Karnak (an astonishing puppet by Kira Rose Kemp, expressively voiced and operated by Jthan Morgan with mellifluous mechanical effects from sound designer Oliver Devlin), and it’s truly spooky. Keep hold of the fortune handed to you on arrival, because once you compare yours with others after the show, you’ll discover yet another coincidence. This one by clever design.

Clever design permeates this eerie production, where six students of the St. Cassian Chamber Choir – Ocean (Lane Corby), Mischa (Jackson Burling), Noel (Logan Tahiwi), Jane (Maya Handa Naff), Constance (Jade Merematira), and Ricky (Henry Ashby) – board a doomed roller coaster and wake up in Limbo. Facing the fluttering veil to the other side, they must each sing a song that proves why they should get a second chance at life.

It’s easy to see why Ride the Cyclone has gone viral. What a unique premise for a musical. And because each character is so different, we’re treated to a roller coaster (sorry) of genres and artforms – opera, cabaret, pop, you name it. It’s difficult to pinpoint my favourite track in a show where every second is a highlight, but Burling’s autotuned rap This Song is Awesome and Ashby’s (incredibly surprising) Space Age Bachelor Man might take the Sugar Cloud cake (props to Merematira for that bouncy number). Handa Naff’s soprano trills come from Heaven in The Ballad of Jane Doe, Corby’s What the World Needs has me dancing (and giggling) in my seat, and Tahiwi’s Noel’s Lament (raunchily lit by Alex ‘Fish’ Fisher) elicits whoops, hollers, and stamps across the audience that I noisily join with glee.

I’m endlessly spellbound by the talent spilling out of WITCH Music Theatre’s cauldron. From a cast I could catch on Broadway to Emily McDermott’s polished choreography (made more dizzying by Dorothe Olsen’s colourful costumes on Scott Maxim’s spectacular set); to the world-class direction from Ben Tucker-Emerson, head of production Joshua Tucker-Emerson, and Hayden Taylor, musical director, pianist, and conductor; to every single magical detail adorning the stage, Ride the Cyclone is gobsmacking.

Cushions sprawl cosily on the floor in front of the stage, where we are welcomed by Roger Sanders (writer, composer, musician, puppeteer, and performer) in a jaunty black beret. He tells me these are the best seats in the house. I park myself a few rows back, but plenty of the audience take up Sanders’ offer. A young family sits cross-legged on the rugs up front, eating apple slices from a plastic Tupperware. Another clutch of kids have brought puppets from home. Already the space feels intimate, a little like being in your favourite grandparents’ living room. The only elements on stage are a table, a projector screen, and a series of cardboard boxes. 

Originally directed by Daniel Allan, The Boy With Wings begins when Professor Beatrice ‘Birdie’ Bartholomew (Bridget Sanders, writer, performer, and creative director) emerges to make an enthused presentation about the migratory journey of the kuaka/bar-tailed godwit. Birdie is charming and goofy, an absentminded professor who soon has all the kids giggling. That is, until Sanders opens the box, and the whole room falls quiet. 

Each box unfolds into a miniature set, built to scale for Jack, the star of the puppet show. In the Sanders’ hands, Jack travels across far mountains, shimmering velvet seas, and vast cardboard cities to try and save his failing orchard. Shifting back and forth between Jack’s journey and the kuaka’s migration poetically interweaves the two tales. But the magic lies somewhere in the exquisite hand-painted detail of the sets, the way the hidden world emerges as if from nothing, the way the texture of fabric, light, music, and performance bring the sets and figures to life. I hear more than one “wow” from the audience when the kuaka first takes flight. 

Simply, the Sanders team at Birdlife Productions are brilliant storytellers. Their ability to hold the audience’s attention while they shift between scenes, disciplines, tones, storylines, and characters is astonishing. An absolute must-see next time they’re in Wellington!

On Friday the 10^th of April, one of the world’s most iconic electronic dance musical festivals saw more than 30 artists perform across four stages along the Wellington Waterfront. From 3pm till midnight, the good vibes could be heard reverbing across a city lit up by rainbow LEDs, pyrotechnic and firework displays, and thousands of kaleidoscopically dressed festivalgoers. 23,000, to be exact!

The sun turned it up for us, with free sunnies available for a time and a spectacular sunset behind the Resistance Stage that cast a pink glow over German DJ MARTEN HØRGER’s feel-good house set. At 6pm we shifted to the Oasis Stage – right by the sparkling ocean with plenty of room to breathe and dance – to vibe to Aotearoa jungle and bass legend Paige Julia’s techno excellence.

The lighting at the ULTRA Main Stage for Oliver Heldens was fire (literally). Bathed in burnt tangerine orange and sunshine yellow, the Dutch DJ and producer dropped banger after banger. German DJ Zedd, French-Algerian EDM and dubstep force DJ Snake, and chart-topping American duo The Chainsmokers followed Oliver in turn, headlining a colossal ULTRA Main Stage lineup.

Los Angelite Ray Volpe – aka the Volpetron – was one of my highlights on the UMF Radio Stage at 8:20pm. Two Australian headliners tore up the same stage next. I’m stoked to have joined the thousands screaming “Tarantula!” back at drum and bass band Pendulum, and to have witnessed Alison Wonderland hecking up the crowd on a spiritual level after that.   

We saw out the night with anthemic producers Flowidus at Oasis. We had no idea it was the best spot in the house for a surprise fireworks display that matched our elation.

The buzz before, during, and after ULTRA was undeniable. I spoke with four friends afterwards to find out why we’re all still raving about it.  

Jesse “loved the fact that the first ULTRA New Zealand edition was held on the Wellington Waterfront”.

“It was the perfect venue to spread four stages across while maintaining exceptional sound quality at every stage,” he said. “It was great to be able to move away from stages to get food and drinks and the Audiology crew did a great job of making sure there were ample facilities for everyone along the way.”

This was the most recurring theme of our chats: how well organised and managed ULTRA was. The intuitive layout allowed people to move around with ease rather than elbow-barge their way to the loos or bars – a huge achievement for a sold-out festival of 23,000 revellers.

Ed agreed the environment was awesome thanks to the “good crowds – a lot of people were very respectful, and you could move to and from each stage with no drama”.

Andie furthered that “the crowd control between the stages was excellent”.

“And not a lot of issues with people shoving,” Ed nodded.

When it came to the stellar lineup, Andie was awestruck by the sheer scale of ULTRA and “really happy to actually get dubstep and other types of EDM in Wellington. We usually only get drum and bass, and while I love drum and bass, I love dubstep. My favourite set was definitely Nghtmre. Such a good time.”

Keri raved about Oliver Heldens and his throwback hits.

“I was having a spiritual moment. You know it!”

Ed’s highlight was “for sure Alison Wonderland – she was amazing”. 

Jesse’s were Mollie Collins, Oliver Heldens, Pendulum, Alison Wonderland, Flowidus, and “our very own Paige Julia”.

“The light shows were epic and the fireworks at the end were a beautiful way to sum up a magical day,” Jesse continued. “Can’t wait to come back again next year, it can only get bigger and better from here!”

Count me in!

Before I walked into the theatre, I was curious as to how, exactly, a monster was going to eat an abstract concept, on stage, in front of a packed audience of children and parents in Circa Two. I was also immensely excited to see the imagination of beloved children’s author and illustrator Ruth Paul brought to life, of which the show does a rollicking job. Between the charismatic cast (Tadhg Mackay, Te KuraHuia Henare-Stewart, and Paul herself), energetic musical numbers (composed by music director and sound designer Charlotte Yates, with lyrics by Paul and Yates), age-appropriate engagement with anxieties about the tech industry, fart jokes, and a moving performance by a mouse Velcroed to a remote-control car, Help! A Monster Ate My Story is wild, whimsical, and completely worth a watch.

The story kicks off with Paul asking the audience for help: she has an important reading to do at the new library soon, but she hasn’t finished writing her new book! In fact, she hasn’t even started. The metafictional madness escalates when Paul decides to use AI to meet her deadline. She finds, to her horror, that she has created a real life ‘Mash-up Monster’ (Mackay), an AI beast that wants to consume her previous books and turn them into stinky farts. Luckily, she has the help of her old characters: Lion (also Mackay), T-Rex (Henare-Stewart), and Jellyfish (Paul), who are equally unhappy about the prospect of their books being eaten. Together, they come up with a plan to defeat this new menace, while Paul rediscovers her artistic process along the way.

The show does a lovely job of making the issues of generative AI accessible and entertaining for tamariki. All the while, it hits an earnest note for the adults in the audience who might share some of Paul’s anxieties. The production design (Fifi Colston with Paul) is a particular standout, with costumes that are immediately iconic and evoke all the expressiveness that Paul’s characters have on the page. A heartfelt, feel-good romp.

Under the direction of André de Ridder, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra delivers a remarkably focused and cohesive performance that highlights the depth of talent within its own ranks.

At the centre of the programme is Bryce Dessner’s Trombone Concerto, performed under unusual circumstances. The orchestra learned only two weeks prior to the concert that the originally scheduled international soloist Jörgen van Rijen, who was planning to premiere a work written for him, was injured and unable to play. In response, the programme pivoted rapidly to Dessner’s concerto, with NZSO section principal trombone David Bremner stepping forward as soloist.

Bremner plays superbly, drawing an impressive range of colours from his instrument: percussive and incisive one moment, molten and lyrical the next, crystal-clear lines interspersed with gravelly and jazzy voiced phrases. Especially striking are passages in which the solo line fragments and reappears across the brass section. Here, Bremner’s close working relationship with his colleagues is evident. The ability of the other musicians to match his tone and colour so precisely creates uncanny effects, as though the soloist were accompanying himself. The sound seems to braid and divide without losing coherence. It is both technically impressive and musically absorbing.

Dessner’s concerto is an intelligent pairing with the Shostakovich that follows. It is an unabashedly contemporary and direct work, but like the Shostakovich it utilises dissonance and rhythmic tension in service of beauty and emotional insights.

The long opening movement of Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony unfolds with a grim and unsettling inevitability, its jagged motifs and mounting climaxes tightly controlled. De Ridder resists any temptation to over-dramatise, trusting the music’s cumulative power. Particularly impressive is the relentless drive of the ostinato in the third movement, which maintains its force with unbearably intense mechanical insistence.

The slow fourth movement is laden with grief, almost soothed, almost hopeful by turns. The NZSO captures this ambiguity beautifully, closing with a wistful and heartrending release.