Shows

By now, anyone wandering Wellington’s wonderful waterfront would have spotted two large shipping containers set up at Odlins Plaza. In giant block letters, one reads FLIGHT, the other SÉANCE. But what worlds wait inside?

DARKFIELD is an immersive audio experience that takes place in total darkness, but not before audiences see the inside of the containers. This gives us a setting for the experience to unfold and grounds us in reality before the rug is pulled out from underneath us (figuratively, but it sure feels literal) and our imaginations take flight.

Which brings me to FLIGHT. With the Australian and New Zealand set built by Show Works, stepping inside this container elicits a collective audible gasp. It looks practically identical to the right side of an airplane cabin, complete with round windows through which a faint glow emits. Familiar sounds you’d hear on any flight beep and crackle through the provided headsets. Hilariously, and without being asked to do so, many of us fasten our seatbelts. On small overhead screens, flight attendant Eugénie Pastor relays safety instructions and our captain, Nigel Barrett, dials in. Cue lights out.

It's pitch black as the sound of our plane taking off blares in our ears. I nearly get vertigo and, as I thrust back in my seat unwittingly, I curse inwardly for having forgotten my sucky lollies. Then I remember… this isn’t real! Talk about suspension of disbelief.

Fictional babies start to cry from multiple seats as their ears pop from the altitude and I find myself counting my blessings I’m not seated next to one of them before remembering, again, that I’m on the ground in Wellington. A hilarious highlight of the 360-degree audio performance comes when our flight attendant tells the babies to stop crying, please, and dead silence ensues.

The story that unfolds from here is a touch on the nose radome, particularly with the reference to a passenger named Mr Schrödinger. As someone who genuinely felt like they were on an airplane in the first five minutes, the script’s diversion into fantastical realms muddied my experience. I’d be curious to see a storyline that leans more on the merits of such a brilliant and unique concept – perhaps one that takes audiences on a regular flight filled with interesting character studies or relationship (aero)dynamics. Nevertheless, I’d recommend DARKFIELD: FLIGHT for the highly detailed set and the singularity of the experience: apart from next door at SÉANCE, you’ll never see (or hear) anything like it!

SÉANCE sees audiences enter a room single file, peeling left and right to sit on either side of a large rectangular table that runs the length of the shipping container. Small golden bells dangle on red strings, but other than that, the set (built for Australia and New Zealand by Form Imagination) is stark, cold. We’re instructed to place both hands on the table and to not, under any circumstances, take them off for the duration of the experience, lest we break the connection and unleash a spirit. Nervous energy crackles down the table like electricity. When the lights go out, Tom Lyall performs a séance through our headphones, seemingly stomping up and down the table and whispering sweet spooky nothings in our ears. I can’t spoil the story here, but there’s a certain melting, squelching sound that still makes me shudder!    

With artistic direction from David Rosenberg and Glen Neath, executive direction from Andrea Salazar, and creative direction from senior creative producer Victoria Eyton, DARKFIELD is produced by Amy Johnson and Nathan Alexander of Realscape Productions. I would’ve loved to have seen more character development throughout both stories, but wholly enjoyed my time in the alternative worlds, the heart-palpitating dark fields conjured up by this creative team. Enter at your own peril!

The Ballad of Briar Grant tells the story of Hayley (played by Phoebe Caldeiro) and how she finds herself again after confessing her true feelings and being rejected by Briar Grant, her best friend. After her hopes are crushed, aimless and despairing, she ends up travelling to an apple orchard in the south of France. Here she is confronted by fate and unable to escape her emotions, as the woman she is working with is also called Briar Grant (played by Anna Barker).

Barker and Caldeiro have excellent chemistry, their sharp and considered delivery getting the humour of the script across as the ridiculous coincidence of their situation is ignited by their opposing personalities. Hayley is dejected and lost, struggling to draw meaning from the beautiful landscape she has found herself in. Meanwhile, Briar is manic, brash, and desperate for connection to the point of unabashed obnoxiousness. The characters are relatable, and while their situation may not be familiar, it is easy to empathise with them and read oneself into the story. Hayley’s feelings of despondence and frustration are compellingly painted by Caldeiro, matched by Barker’s neurotic pushiness as Briar Grant.

The set design by Heather Wright is effective, consisting of modular crates full of apples and some drapes that evoke the rows of the apple orchard. Sound design by Ben Kelly and lighting by Jacob Banks also satisfyingly set the scene, with sounds of birdsong and an orange glow of light to depict the warm, sunny day in France. Lighting and sound are also used to punctuate key moments in the play, including the climax of the story where Hayley’s emotions finally build up to express her frustrations about her original Briar in song. 

At times, there are pregnant, ponderous moments in the play where the action is drawn out and we are able to reflect on what the characters are going through. Sometimes the motivation in these moments is a little unclear, but overall, the script is understandable and lifelike. Thus, it is incredibly cathartic to see the characters grow and change, and reflect on how we also may have become different from our past selves.

Bella Baird is a brilliant but brittle Ivy League creative writing professor. Christopher Dunn is her talented yet angry and somewhat mysterious student. Surrounded by real life and literary fiction, an unusual friendship grows between their two lonely souls. Then one winter’s day, Bella asks an unthinkable favour of Christopher and their figurative and literal bonds turn full circle.

With much of the text delivered in direct address to the audience, Dulcie Smart has a huge job to do in playing Bella and does so with the self-assurance of an accomplished international stage and screen actor. As Christopher, Kieran Charnock carefully carries the awkwardness and sometimes disingenuous nature of a young novelist struggling to find his identity and voice. 

Stella Reid’s tight and flowing direction makes the most of Meg Rollandi’s creative set design that allows multiple rooms, a bar, and a park to co-exist without need for walls. Natasha James’ moodily effective lighting design that employs three onstage lamps, plus top and side light through haze, emphasises the darkly multi-layered narrative. Thomas Arbor’s shapeshifting music and sound effects provide a pulsing sonic backdrop, most appreciably during the scenes where both actors are on stage. 

I appreciate the expressive and often lyrical writing, the exploration of the loneliness that sometimes accompanies high intelligence and literary sensibility, and the encircled creativity of the story. I would like to have seen Bella and Christopher interact more often and have more actual dialogue and less reported speech than Adam Rapp’s script gave them as their refreshingly non-sexual relationship unfolded. This I think would have allowed me to emotionally invest in the characters and their fates, rather than marvelling at their intellectual capabilities. Ultimately, The Sound Inside tugged more at my head than my heart.

With an award-nominated script, high production values, slick direction, and highly rated actors, The Sound Inside is a classy piece of theatre that will leave you with much to chew on and dissect.

Mister Six and I had the privilege of being in the presence of a famous duo at Heidi and Sean Show. Heidi Jean Lougher and Sean Kaata Dwen have trained and performed all over the world, including Vietnam, Scotland, and Iceland, and they did not disappoint. They may have even encouraged my son to attend circus school one day!

Although the weather is wet, the Tararaua Tramping Club Clubrooms are warm and cosy. We are warmly welcomed by Fergus Aitken and show producer Amalia Calder at the door and make our way to the lolly table, which has become a part of our tradition when attending KidzStuff shows. Then we go to scout out some choice seats. The venue is already pretty full, and I am surrounded by lots of excited faces. What I love about the theatre is the fact that there aren’t allocated seats, and the kids are welcome to sit on the rug right in front of the stage. Talk about front-row action!

Heidi and Sean’s simple but effective staging, costumes, and props make us intrigued about what tricks they might have up their sleeves. The lights and music by the wonderful Deb McGuire set the vibe for each act.

With the number of oohs and aahs, gasps and claps that we heard (and sounded ourselves), it’s safe to say you and your kids will be in for a treat at Heidi and Sean Show. Humorous jokes are worked into the act, aimed at both young and old. It gets even more fun with a bit of audience participation, and the finale will leave you wanting more.

After every show I go to with Mister Six, I always ask him what his favourite part was. Unfortunately, I can’t share his specific answer this time because I don’t want to spoil it for you, but it does turn out that he loved… drumroll please… all of it! He loves magic, tricks, stunts, and all things awe-inspiring. So, pop down to Heidi and Sean Show for a show like no other these school holidays!

Presenting A Nightime Travesty in its international debut, one of Australia’s few First Nations independent theatre collectives explodes onto the Wellington stage as part of the Kia Mau Festival. Their “unique brand of Blak Brechtian, post-traumatic adventure theatre” is a brutal, passionate, and X-rated satire against toxic patriarchy, colonialism, environmental destruction, white supremacy, and the abuse of God to demonise and subjugate Indigenous peoples. Even the inequities and privations of the theatre world come under its savage spotlight.

Co-creators and committed performers Kamarra Bell-Wykes and Carly Sheppard play the lion’s share of the roles as the Last Fleet of privileged humans takes to the sky to escape a poisoned Earth burning below them. They’re bound for an uncertain fate, perhaps the afterlife they’ve dreamed of in church. The “last Aboriginal”, the naively hopeful and warrior-hearted Angel, is one of two flight attendants and a failed pilot, denied the chance to fulfil her potential simply by her race and sex. The actual pilot, Captain God’s Gift, is an over-sexed, hugely endowed man-beast who ravages any available female just because he can. Lurking on the fringes and occasionally joining the story is a bong-smoking, masturbating Death (Zach Blampied).

Helping deliver the often hilarious, occasionally heart-rending original songs are smallsound and Matthew Pana on guitar and drums. smallsound is also responsible for the easily portable set design that involves a desk, skulls, stuffed toys, a couple of small bins, a large gong, and various other bits and pieces that Death plays with and that become props used throughout the show, alongside the odd amputated limb and severed head. Gina Gascoigne’s pacy lighting design augments the garish, crazy action.

A Nightime Travesty thoroughly eviscerates its themes in 100 minutes of raw, eye-popping theatre. Sit in the front row and you’ll be offered bottles of urine and cat food to keep you going on this journey to Hell. Strap in for a wild ride!

As part of the Kia Mau Festival, this collection of three dance works traces the connections between vast ancestral landscapes and our bodies. It’s performed by Raven Spirit Dance hailing from Vancouver, Turtle Island, and the unceded ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh) First Nations.

Frost Exploding Trees Moon follows the journey of a woman (Michelle Olson) travelling her trap line. She is simply outfitted in dress, head scarf, and soft leather boots and carries three tree branches. She moves sometimes joyfully, sometimes thoughtfully, sometimes fearfully while responding to the rhythms of ancestral music and song. Eventually, her branches become a modest teepee that she shelters under from the harsh mountain environment she previously revelled in.

The second piece, Spine of the Mother, began as a collaboration between Indigenous artists in Canada and Peru and explores their deep connection with the mountain ranges that join them geographically. Representing the spirits of North and South, Eagle and Condor, two women (Tasha Faye Evans and Marisa Gold) interact with stones while haunting music and the harsh sound of grinding rock guides their movements. Often twisted, painful, and frantic, their bodies echo the cracking freeze and thaw of the high mountains. They find peace and connection in each other as the two hemispheres come together in breath and spirit.

Finally, Confluence uses five flowing, playful bodies to trace the journey of a rushing river that speaks to the resilience and adaptability of Indigenous women. Dressed in bright colours, the five women (Michelle Olson, Starr Muranko, Jeanette Kotowich, Samantha Sutherland, and Emily Solstice) clap and move in time as they celebrate life together, then split and reform as water curves around rocks. A sweet echo of the first piece comes as Olson is briefly left solo on the stage glancing upwards at the sky.

Beautifully lit (John Carter and Jonathan Kim) and accompanied by a lush soundscape from a variety of artists, Braiding the Land is a contemplative and thought-provoking physical exploration of the ancient ties between people and land.

As director Izzy Rabey notes in the programme, For the Love of Spam is often “the first encounter audiences have with someone from Guam” and that was certainly true in my case. I’ve never knowingly met anyone from this small Micronesian island perched on the lip of the Marianas Trench and knew little about it apart from its bloody role as a Japan–US battleground in World War II. I also didn’t know that the canned meat made famous by a Monty Python song was so integral to the culture there.

Sierra Sevilla is a wonderfully engaging performer and has written this show, on in Wellington as part of the Kia Mau Festival, from her heart. With a few simple props and set pieces – most notably a cutout of Guam made from Astroturf and a cross constructed from piled-up Spam tins – she tells us the story of her waymaking in life as a 33-year-old CHamorou/Filipino/White woman and lover of Spam. Along the way, various audience members are brought into the story, including one brave young woman who becomes Problematic Roommate Number 5, who thinks Spam is gross and not something you should be eating in a Boston university dorm.

The CHamorou creation story of Guam, playing Quidditch to fit in, a hunky Spam Daddy who provides comfort while she’s homesick in London, and a conversation during sex with her husband about introducing their future kids to the tinned comestible all feature in a hilarious tale of finding her place in the world. Punctuated by song and dance, it’s all light-hearted and entertaining until the final kicker where 14 minutes take on a deadly significance and we find out how vital the presence of a foodstuff can be in someone’s life.

Sevilla and Rabey have beautifully achieved what they set out to do – making a work about colonialism and Indigenous people’s rights funny and engaging without alienating the audience. I left the theatre feeling enlightened in a way I never expected from a play ostensibly concerning spiced ham.

A Master of None: Brown Fala marks celebrated tenor Lila Crichton’s debut as writer, composer, and director. Created together with Woven Collective and presented as part of the Kia Mau Festival, the production melds artforms, influences, and modes of narrative into a cohesive aesthetic world that feels simultaneously radically creative and profoundly grounded.

The story is told through a plethora of techniques, but music is key, with all of the cast contributing voice talents and most also serving as musicians. The compositions celebrate Samoan roots and the influences of Māori and Black culture, and feature magnificent choral sections.

The narrative addresses the issue of violence against women and tamariki in Samoa through the fala, or woven mat. Fala are used by the cast as gathering places, sites for work, storytelling, intimacy, and violence. The action is structured around the communal activities required for making fala: harvesting pandanus leaves, boiling, drying, and finally weaving the strands together. The ensemble’s movements and choreography (Luchiano Tuioti) are deftly executed and enrich the worldbuilding.

Fala also feature in the practice of ifoga, when an offender covers themselves with a fine mat as an atonement for an offence. At one point a sobbing woman is confined under a mat by her partner, and the discomfort of the ensemble (and audience) is left to grow as she continues to cry, isolated in the dark from the rest of her community. The ifoga, and by extension the weight of shame, is then moved by the community onto the offending partner. The following sequence in which the woman is restored to her full dignity through community care, and the contrite offender is reintegrated, is perfectly paced and poignant.

A Master of None: Brown Fala is a superbly well-crafted show from a multi-talented virtuosic team. All elements of the production from wardrobe (Masi Smith) to videography (Inti Resende) deserve their own paragraph of praise. Grounded in pride and identity, this is powerful contemporary theatre that manages at the same time to be gentle, and to hold space for our human complexity.

Dial M for Murder, a play made famous by Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 film adaptation, is a classic thriller that masterfully builds suspense and drama.

Chris O’Grady plays Tony Wendice, a former tennis champion who plans the murder of his wealthy wife Sheila (Sylvia McKenna). Sheila’s ex-lover Max (Ava Voci) is a vivacious American murder mystery writer, recently returned to London. Voci and McKenna are earnest and affectionate together, providing a counterpoint to the sinister undercurrents of the story.

O’Grady’s performance captures Tony’s duplicity, giving us his genial façade without ever quite letting us forget that there is a cold, calculating character beneath. He is especially brilliant when manipulating the quietly imperious Inspector Hubbard (Susannah Donovan), feigning distress and outrage in supposed defence of his wife.

Kevin Hastings gives an astutely observed performance as the fatally unscrupulous Captain Lesgate, an old schoolmate of Tony’s whose past makes him vulnerable to coercion. Hastings shares one pivotal scene with O’Grady that establishes the central conceit of the story, and his convincingly shifty Captain Lesgate grounds the action that follows. Hastings precisely renders the Captain’s rising unease as he realises the dreadful situation he’s in, and both actors make the most of the brilliantly crafted writing.

Devon Heaphy’s lighting design supports the shifting moods of this one-room drama, especially when lights are switched off in the flat and the glowing fireplace casts strange shadows. The action of the first act is perfectly paced, with pauses and quiet moments held just long enough to agonising effect. When Sheila is left alone in the flat for a quiet evening, pasting pictures in a scrapbook before turning off the lights and going to bed, the audience is intensely still, hardly daring to breathe as we anticipate what might happen next.

This Wellington Repertory Theatre production celebrates a classic play and captures the essence of a thriller. This is an evening of theatre that feels like curling up with a murder mystery by the fire, perfect for a winter night away from Wellington's dark and windy streets.

Sameena Zehra’s Homicidal Pacifist – Dust Off Your Guillotines is a one-hour, rage-filled, self-professed ‘unhinged rant’ premiering as part of the NZ International Comedy Festival. A charismatic and engaging performer, Zehra is at her strongest and most breathtaking when she intersperses her own stories and experiences through the show, which explores New Zealand and world politics, racism, humanity, and war, primarily the Gaza war.  

What starts as assured stand-up morphs into what feels more like a TED Talk than a comedy show. I mean this with no disrespect, and believe Homicidal Pacifist – Dust Off Your Guillotines has the potential to open up the conversation on what comedy can and should do. When it comes to the big stuff – and there is no bigger stuff than war, than senseless slaughter – I think comedy’s power lies in its ability to break down our barriers with laughter. In a past interview, comedian Pax Assadi put it to me that when someone’s mouth falls open to laugh, that’s when you can slip your message in. It’s like once those hard exterior walls come down, the interior softens. This show is anything but a softening. Let’s call it a reckoning!

From the ‘mmm’s murmuring through the gallery, it seems most of the audience are receptive to Zehra’s message and onboard with the political takes at play. While every person on this Earth can stand to learn and grow, if we already agree and no Wellingtonian here is likely to change their mind, does that make us the target audience or the opposite?

I do note that our laughter, at first exuberant, bubbles over into a subdued simmer by the second half – as if we know how we feel but not what to do about it or how to react. We’ve been softened by the gags, the brilliant personal anecdotes, the hilarious audience asides, the silly little songs (shout out to Spider-Man’s hand parkour) of the well-crafted first half. But as the second half builds in intensity to boiling point, it feels like there’s nowhere left to go. It’s a lot to take in, to experience, individually and collectively. Despite the show ending with a brief call to action and a moment of respite in the shape of a great joke (the gay thread is *chef’s kiss), I’m left with a sort of hopelessness. That, of course, may well be the point.

Having studied political science at university, Guy Williams has made his name as a comedian with a strong political bent. So, it was no surprise that his set for the NZ International Comedy Festival, If you mildly criticise me I’ll say it’s cancel culture and turn to the alt right, focused heavily on white privilege – including his own – and the hypocrisy of those with right-wing views.

Beginning with a story about his own ‘undiagnosed ADHD’ excuse getting him off a speeding ticket, Williams leaned into the confidence of the mediocre white man. Leading on from this, the ACT Party’s disingenuous cover-up of Tim Jago’s charges of indecently assaulting two teenage boys in the 1990s quickly came under the spotlight before Williams contrasted this with the way his ex-partner Green MP Golriz Ghahraman was treated by the media and politicians following her relatively mild crime of shoplifting.

The dire state of New Zealand journalism, the suicidal grimness of Quest hotels, his mum’s anti-trans and weirdly racist views on immigrants (she’s Canadian), and his dad’s emotional reticence all get Williams’ scathing comedy treatment. The latter topic becomes a running thread throughout the show as Williams plays recorded video calls with his dad. The denouement from Williams’ ongoing project to cajole his dad into saying “I love you” is the emotional goal kick of the show.

Williams was unwittingly aided on this journey by a backrow, ‘dropnuts’ heckler he quickly dubbed Shane, who made his presence felt early on and became a naïve foil for Williams’ humour. Williams dealt to Shane’s interjections with funny reposts until he started bagging the Green Party’s social policies, at which point Williams switched into a highly erudite and non-comedic explanation of neoliberal versus progressive policy. Shane’s pathetic whine about how the current government was treating him then got the biggest reaction of the night from both Williams and the audience and almost made me believe he was a plant. If you’re going to heckle a political comedian, especially if you’re a self-confessed millionaire National-voting car salesman from Stokes Valley among a majority left-leaning audience, at least be good at it!

Self-described spicy boy Barnie Duncan is back in the capital for the NZ International Comedy Festival with his unique brand of surreal humour blended with a driving emotional undercurrent, this time of guilt. The incident in question happened during an improvised show in 2017 when Duncan kissed an unsuspecting female audience member on the lips in the name of comedy. She seemed OK with it at the time, but over the course of Ooky Pooky, Duncan’s discomfort with the patriarchal power dynamic he created becomes clear. Employing his mum’s favourite phrase for “male-adjacent grubbiness”, Duncan exhibits his own ooky pookiness in delightfully weird and wacky ways. As in his last show Bunny, he is accompanied by his sidekick, an LED screen that adds occasional commentary of its own.

Duncan’s personal grossness seems to have been his destiny, at least according to a droning British astrologer who recorded his life’s course according to the stars on a cassette tape in 1980 when Duncan was just a toddler. The astrologer’s name was Michael Jackson, itself a deep vein of ooky pookiness that Duncan has no hesitation in exploiting. The Gaza genocide – ‘FREE PALESTINE’ beams the LED screen – Russell Brand (on over-decorated hand towel), and David Seymour (what you get when a human breeds with a pencil) also come under the ooky spotlight. Less humorous is the creepy Indian guru that Barnaby James Ganesh Duncan met as a child when he and his mum spent 18 months in an ashram.

It isn’t all about the grubbiness, though. Duncan’s charming obsession with animals reemerges in the form of a moth hooking up with a butterfly at an office party, an impression of a stingray who can only see out of the back of its head, and an extended sequence about ecstatic dust mites. Add in an old marionette of Goofy, teabags, and a snow machine and you have what his promotional flyer accurately describes as “the blending of the physical with the cerebral in profoundly stupid ways”.