Co-founded and published by Fergus Barrowman, Sport magazine ran from 1988 to 2019. It was a literary magazine that included a mix of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays, and much more.

While it may not be around anymore, A Game of Two Halves was put together as a celebration of the best it had to offer – a highlight reel, if you will. Like the back of the book says, it looks back on 15 issues and presents us with some of its best work, starting in 2005 through to 2019.

If you are a writing buff, you will recognise some of the names in this book. For me, one of the standouts was the poet and short story writer Bill Manhire. While I’m not always a fan of the poetic verse, his words almost always had me smiling and, in a lot of cases re-reading them to make sure I understood the ideas he was trying to convey. Starting with The Eye of the Blackbird and The School Bus.

In many ways, this title has a lot in common with the latest book I reviewed, a short story collection called Middle Distance. You might remember that I said some readers might be put off by finding stories they didn’t like before finding ones they did. But in the case of A Game of Two Halves, that shouldn’t be a problem, especially with the content of 100 writers here. It’s almost ironic that the sheer volume available could be seen as a negative.

Its size might put off younger readers or those just getting into reading, but each story is reasonably easy to read, so once they start, it should be easy enough to keep going until the end.

This is the perfect addition to anyone’s library, and Fergus Barrowman should be proud to have this as a legacy to Sport magazine. It shows us just how much literary talent has been on display in this country.

Before You Knew My Name is a one-sitting read – as I turned the pages, time became irrelevant and it was hard to disengage from the voice of murdered teen Alice Lee who slowly and magnificently draws you in. Author Jacqueline Bublitz has created something unusual and intriguing, and it’s hard to not picture a fresh-faced Alice escaping to a new life in New York City as her retrospective words capture you. Alongside Alice is the parallel story of Ruby – a girl just like Alice, destined to escape life’s similar disappointments, only she’s older and still alive.

“In the beginning, I disappeared on purpose. Extricated myself from a life I didn’t want, just like Ruby did. But unlike Ruby, I didn’t tell anyone where I went.”

As the story unfolds I found myself inextricably aware of Alice standing strong and pragmatic in death, as the person she always was, but never knew it. The power she had once given to men, who had no right to it, propelling her forward. For a while, Alice is happy. She meets a kindly old man, Noah, who restores her faith in men.

Through Alice’s untimely death, hers and Ruby’s lives intertwine. There’s Alice’s murder and the devastation it brings, and there’s the deep connection Ruby feels to the body she has just discovered.

It’s as if you can feel what Alice feels and reminisce with her about her stolen youth and innocence. But there’s never a sense she is bitter or overly longing for what was.

Before You Knew My Name is a novel that keeps you questioning till the end. It made me think of all the young people who have left in search of a new adventure, or left to escape an unwanted life in search of a new one; and all the lives taken that were sadly not a work of fiction.

It’s the heartbreaking story of a girl whose life once seemingly irrelevant, post tragedy, becomes extraordinary.

“Mama won’t look at me in my new clothes,” observes Oscar Upperton, writing in his assumed persona of Dr James Barry, the subject of The Surgeon’s Brain. “Tubes of cloth around my legs, tight, and a tight coat across my chest.” Thus attired, a transgender man living in the Victorian era ventures upon his career as a military surgeon.

The term transgender was non-existent at the time – did that make our man’s life any easier? “My landlady asks if I’ll give her trouble and I say I will not.” And later, in the same poem, “I observe my landlady’s gait and track the progression of her rheumatism”.

Such a juxtaposition of the behavioural and the anatomical typifies many of the poems in this collection, describing as they do imagined incidents, situations, and encounters in a life startling in its conception and courageous in its carrying out. “The rules are different now. I travel unchaperoned; I enter public houses; I attend a university.”

Barry’s work as a surgeon puts him in touch with female patients – repressed, underestimated, confined in airless rooms – a salutary reminder of Victorian times and values. Later, travelling beyond England’s shores, he encounters pressures from many quarters – not the least medical – in his attempts to heal, as well as promote public health reform.

One of the most striking poems amongst many is the eponymous The Surgeon’s Brain. “A man’s brain is, to some, the man himself. Forget this soul nonsense. He has cut into a thousand bodies and never seen a soul.” This quote prefaces a poetic meditation on the nature of the brain – sometimes grisly, determinedly objective, always sternly practical.

Dr Barry’s outward travels encompassed lands as far as the Windward and Leeward Islands, but they are surpassed by his inward travels, the true extent of which we shall never know. He requested burial without any post-mortem examination; such secrecy was surely justified.

We can only speculate and admire – something Upperton achieves with rare artistry.

A last-minute venue change from Cuba Street to Odlins Plaza made finding The Door knobs a challenge this weekend. Once I’d unearthed their social media post and hot-footed down to the waterfront, I discovered I hadn’t missed the start as feared because they were running half an hour late.

My second frustration was realising that my understanding of what I was about to see wasn’t what I’d interpreted it to be from the advertising. I’d arrived expecting to see four performances in one one-hour show. However, each artist performs only once per day, so the stated show duration of 240 minutes is literally that. Like most people, I don’t have four hours of my life to devote to street theatre and had a different expectation of something included in the Fringe Festival.

Organisational and advertorial sketchiness aside, the two Door knobs performances I did catch were entertaining. Clown Fraser Hooper was on first. Fortunately, he is not the traditional white-faced clown that I always found terrifying even before the movie version of Stephen King’s IT. He is of the modern, surrealist style with a cute dance, silly electronic sound effects, and a predilection for ducks. His show relied heavily on the cooperation (or not) of the mostly young audience members who gamefully held inflated balloons, chased a motorised mallard, and wore a fish head to swim in a fake pond. The fact that his final stunt was an epic fail due in part to the overzealous propulsion of a plastic duck into the air by an audience member was probably funnier than if it had worked.

The second, shorter, performance was by Patrick ‘Tennis Tricks’ Federer. Anyone who can squeeze their whole body through a destringed tennis racquet deserves praise, as does someone who can ride a two-metre-tall unicycle and juggle three tennis rackets while doing so. He also made the valid point that laughter is great for mental health, which is what street theatre is all about. And I did laugh.

Genoveva is a fish who likes jazz, black and white films, and philosophy but loves only fish flakes. She wasn’t always a fish. Once she was a cheeky little girl, but now she inhabits a tank in an undisclosed domestic location with an unseen woman shouting in a distant room.

The powerful one-woman performance from Genoveva Reverte centres on intimate monologues about a fatherless childhood that created her self-confessed daddy issues, bad relationships with men steeped in patriarchy and misogyny, a brush with religion, and other relatable life experiences that range from the amusing to the deeply traumatic.

Genoveva’s excellent writing could easily engage an audience for an hour by itself. The extended metaphor of a woman as a house speaks strongly of female oppression and elicits murmurs of agreement from the audience.

As presented in this performance, the spoken narrative is interspersed with physical comedy, clowning, and Epic theatre techniques that force the audience to engage with the confronting shape of Genoveva’s addiction to fish flakes – a stand-in for destructive human coping mechanisms such as drink, drugs, and sex – in novel ways. We are treated to a mimed display of developing alcoholism through a comedic rendition of the song A Horse With No Name that is simultaneously laugh-out-loud funny and painfully sad.

This could all be doom and gloom, but Genoveva comes to understand that no matter how hard she tries, she’ll always be a fish because she is the sum of her experiences. And that’s okay.

The minimal staging consists mainly of filmed material projected onto the back wall. This is largely effective in supporting the narrative, although the Apple toolbar that lurks at the top of the screen when the AV elements are inactive is a distraction. The placement of lighting was also a little off so that Genoveva sometimes struggled to find her light. With a little more spit and polish on the production side, this has the potential to be a great show.

A word to the wise: Spitz & Crumple is an entirely improvised concert. The banter, the stories, the songs, even the choreography are all made up on the spot. In the first 10 minutes I sat dumbfounded, thinking it had to be one of the strangest and worst shows ever. When it clicked, I did a full 180. “This is one of the strangest and best shows ever”, I whispered to my friend. 

Eleanor Spitz (Liz Butler) and Barney Crumple (Ben Jardine) are a married couple from Florida who have been in love and making music for 50 years. Together with The Captain (Matt Hutton) on keys, the famous lounge band is celebrating the release of their Greatest Hits album with us, their adoring fans, who are dotted about in stylish cabaret seating.

We begin with tracks Diamonds In Your Eyes and You Are Like Candy, where Jardine pulls off an incredible trumpet solo sans trumpet. We’re then treated to a taste of Spitz and Crumple’s number one LP Gift Giving (1983), which started Pitchfork as the first album to ever be reviewed on the site. It earned 17 pitchforks and reached heights that all the greats still aspire to.

More show highlights – although the whole thing is a highlight and a half – include The Bond Song (James Bond Under the Sea) (I’ve made that title up, but the song tracks the time James Bond went nautical and sees a stroke of red-lit genius from lighting designer Nino Raphael). Let’s not forget the highly niche and experimental Before the Grease Wars; Citrus Baby One More Time (yes Brit did steal that one, but thankfully she didn’t get her mitts on the citrus part); and the minimal-lyrics, maximum-impact Cha Cha Wow.

Butler and Jardine are two masters of musical improv whose chemistry and cleverness leap off the stage. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed an improv show more, and I’ve seen Whose Line Is It Anyway? live. 

This New Zealand Fringe Festival solo show follows Hero (Gabrielle Raz-Liebman), a budding academic who is conducting some really super important ecological research on termites in the Kakadu National Park of Australia’s Northern Territory. When Hero is paddling about one day, happy as can be, she unwittingly strays into the path of a crocodile, who promptly eats her.

Like the real-life person Being Prey is based on, philosopher Val Plumwood, Hero survives to tell the tale. But while her body recovers, her mental health remains in tatters from the traumatic experience.

Raz-Liebman is a consummate physical theatre and comedy performer. Her character work is exceptional, particularly when it comes to the seedy old academic and the seedy old doctor. It’s unclear whether these are two different characters or not, which certainly makes a statement about men in positions of power. The scene with the victim-blaming doctor makes me deeply uncomfortable and winds up being my show highlight.

Raz-Liebman transitions effortlessly between dream sequences, storytelling, and startling choreography, particularly in the final scene. The lighting and sound (Felix Olohan) help to distinguish state and place and are integrated well. Raz-Liebman handles opening night technical hiccups with good humour and grace.

There’s a wonderful blend of humour and pathos, silliness and meaning in the writing and dramaturgy (Jennifer O’Sullivan), although some scenes could be more concise while others could be fleshed out. Excuse that pun, but I reckon the poopy, liver-squelching mess of a crocodile dissection might have even more of a gross effect if trimmed. At the same time, I’m confused by the introduction of a virus so some explanation and expansion there would be helpful.  

The finale (it’s not a Fringe show until you see someone rolling around in carcass, right?) has a huge impact but what I desperately want to see is a little hope. A glimpse of recovery.

I’m excited for the future of Being Prey and to watch it go from very good to great.

In The S**t Kid, Sarah Harpur exposes a knack for anchored storytelling and deceptive writing. With nothing but a minimal set, a few sound effects, and a colourful array of characters, she coaches the audience to visualise a complete world of snobby horse riders and nosy locals. Unfortunately, where it excels in story elements it falls short on genuine laughs.

Sharni (Harpur) loves her twin brother, she swears it, but can’t help but envy him. While she’s stuck back on the family farm raising a baby, teaching rich kids to ride, and selling horse s**t… I mean, ‘pony poo’… he’s off winning Olympic medals. But Sharni has a plan, if only she can raise enough cash to put it into action.

The S**t Kid deals with something we have all experienced, disappointment, and specifically the envy we can feel when others don’t seem to face as much of it as we do. Maybe it was the time your best friend got a promotion while you were left feeling stuck, or in school when your sibling seemed to rack up accolades while you dawdled. Sharni’s story is particular but the emotions she’s feeling are not, and this makes the story relatable to all in our audience, even if some of us have never set foot in a stable.

Sharni is a likable character, and we certainly root for her to conquer, but I was left a little disappointed in the show’s final minutes. Most of what she does manage to achieve is, seemingly, handed to her. While she does learn some valuable lessons, I feel there is a stronger wrap-up out there.

Another disappointment is the hit-and-miss rate of The S**t Kid’s jokes, which is surprising given this is Harpur’s first solo play but sixth comedic outing. The show is still in development, and I feel a more varied tone could up this aspect of the show – as it stands, there’s simply too much wink wink, nudge nudge, and not enough solid, unexpected punchlines to earn anything more than a chuckle.

What Harpur has discovered with The S**t Kid is a raw talent for playwrighting. With more development, I am sure it could morph into something special.

Breakfast Time is coming in hot, and it’s definitely a tasty meal of a show. A mixed media piece featuring a short film (Aiden Fernando) followed by a deconstructive ‘duologue’, this Fringe show serves up the story of two (not very well acquainted) young adults, Reuben (Bon Buchanan) and Ana (Bella Petrie) cooking breakfast together the morning after their parents’ wedding. The laconic, obligatory, and forced conversation that sautés in the film however quickly sizzles and boils over in the live show to follow as the pair analyse the scene from the film itself, their childhoods, their backgrounds, their opportunities, their challenges, their traumas, and their futures.

Though ‘deconstructed’ wouldn’t normally sound appetising, Brick Haus Productions serves up a show that feels much more like comfort food despite the guise of haute cuisine. The actors excellently portray both renditions of the characters. Buchanan and Petrie are both subtle and obvious in the film, politely masking their contempt yet clearly intending to cause discomfort to the other. The live show however could be likened to Hell’s Kitchen with both characters voicing exactly what the subtleties of the film scene were meant to mask.

It is both satisfying and refreshing to see in the live show what you assumed the characters were thinking in the film. Reuben’s condescension to Ana’s higher social class is palpable and then overt as he deems her a spoiled brat while he slaved away washing dishes since 14 to go to university so he wouldn’t die broke like his grandfather. Ana however shows haughty disdain for Reuben’s materialism and martyrdom for her lonely childhood in which she grew up too fast in order to care for her father and herself.

While both characters yearn for the other to understand them, they do something much more powerful: they lay bare the human condition; normalising trauma, accepting inadequacy, allowing for mistakes, and most importantly connecting us all through our imperfect yet inherent humanity.