James Nokise put a mirror up to our own ridiculousness on Wednesday night, breaking down all the comical madness we saw throughout 2020. His intoxicating energy emits infectious good vibes from the word go, and our captivated audience couldn’t wipe the smiles from their faces for the entire hour.

Let It Out shines a light on all the emotional, silly, and downright peculiar behaviour Nokise observed over the past year, starting at the beginning, when he decided to return to New Zealand to surprise his dad for his birthday… for a week. 400 days later, he’s still here, watching on as New Zealand gets weirder and weirder. There’s our outrage at the result of the cannabis referendum, our unwarranted infatuation with Ashley Bloomfield, and our collective insanity whenever Slice of Heaven plays over a loudspeaker, amongst many other gems.

While Nokise’s natural energy and enthusiasm is responsible for getting us onboard, what truly sustains us is his refined approach to the written word. He knows that in order to wring laughs from us, it’s crucial that we first grasp the premise of each bit. His confident and emotive delivery is always clear and to the point, allowing him to plunge as deep as he likes into any given topic knowing we’re right there with him.

Another of the comedian’s abilities is his character work, which is on full display tonight. Nokise can, at a moment’s notice, transform his voice and mannerisms, inviting a sudden shift in tempo that injects an added dose of hilarity. His impression of Bloomfield is so spot on I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to watch a COVID-19 press conference the same way again.

Transitions from bit to bit are silky smooth, but the rapid-fire pace of the set leaves us in the lurch at times. Sometimes we’re still recovering from one joke as another begins, and a tad more breathing room would give the show definition. Although, this is but a nitpick in an otherwise flawless night of comedy.

In his eighth stand-up hour, two-time Billy T Award-nominee Tim Batt presents a loose but consistently hilarious series of bits that never outstay their welcome and delivers punchlines that roll around in your head long after they land. His comfort onstage allows the audience to relax and settle in for a night of top-notch comedy that is sure to be a highlight of the NZ International Comedy Festival.

Batt begins by thanking us for our bravery in attending the first performance of his new show, admitting that he first has to set a stopwatch as he hasn’t even timed it yet. This would seem to suggest a scattershot show, but Classy Warfare is anything but. He spends the night ruminating on problems facing this and future generations, all with an overarching sense of anarchic glee. Without spoiling too many specifics for his remaining shows, Batt strikes a balance between playful anecdotes of childhood embarrassment, weed-induced deep thoughts, and past jobs with explorations of the absurdity of New Zealand politics, his dire financial situation, and his distrust of capitalism.

As fans of The Worst Idea of All Time (a podcast co-hosted with comedian Guy Montgomery) will tell you, Batt can chat, and it’s this enduring vibe that he bestows on our audience. For an hour, we simply feel as though we are chilling on the couch with that funny old mate of ours who hasn’t popped by for a while. The audience is clearly familiar with his style and him with his audience, yet we are still caught off guard time and time again.

A sign of Batt’s veteran status is his ability to know when a joke has come, served its purpose, and ridden off into the sunset, making his punchlines stick and his messages even more so. The puzzle pieces are all there, and I have no doubt Batt will quickly sculpt Classy Warfare into a tight-packed performance throughout the festival.

Director Kelly Reichardt shows that simplicity is not to be feared. First Cow gets to the root of human behaviour, all the while reaffirming our innate connection with nature. It refuses to get lost in plot, choosing instead to send us into a daze by letting the sounds and colours of the environment wash over us.

In the present day, a woman and her dog stumble upon two skeletons buried in a forest in Oregon. We return in the early 19^th century, where Otis ‘Cookie’ Figowitz (John Magaro) meets Chinese immigrant King-Lu (Orion Lee) and aids him back to health. They soon reunite at a nearby village, where its richest resident, Chief Factor (Toby Jones), has just acquired the territory’s first cow. When Lu discovers that Otis can bake incredible cakes, he sees an opportunity for prosperity. All they need is some milk.

First Cow is unafraid of silence, or rather, it embraces the symphony of nature. Reichardt’s focus is connecting us with these characters, while in a way, the characters and their tale merely connect us with the Earth; Otis’ wardrobe, for example, seamlessly blends with his woodland surroundings. Decisions to shoot in a 4:3 aspect ratio and to allow branches or shrubbery to intrude in the frame show the director’s confidence and give the film its trance-like feel.

The story is meditative in a way few films this past year were, with the possible exception of Best Picture-winner Nomadland. The camera takes time to appreciate time-consuming tasks, until the home stretch when a sense of dread inevitably seeps in.

While part of me wishes the script allowed Magaro and Lee to grit their teeth a little more, the actors mine gold from the quiet bond between their characters. Jones delivers a standout performance as the wickedly snobbish Chief Factor. Watching our heroes screw him over time and time again never gets old.

First Cow is clear in its intentions, and whether you connect with them will be down to your own movie-going preferences. While it may seem light at first, it will weave its way into your mind and stick around for days.

The NZ International Comedy Festival kicked off to a full house on Sunday night as roars of laughter and tubs of mayo filled The Opera House at the Best Foods Comedy Gala.

Introducing some of the best comedians in the country, MC Justine Smith keeps the three-hour show cracking along with whizbang jokes of her own. Her sense of comedic timing makes her the perfect ringmaster, while her humour – grubby, stroppy, yet somehow still charming – sets her up as a consistent audience favourite.

“I feel like I did not make the best use of my allotted time”, Ben Hurley says at the end of his set. It’s one of the funniest moments of the night, as is Nick Rado’s aggressive imitation of kids jacked up on Raro. Guy Montgomery’s takedown of the 6 o’clock news is my gala highlight. I’ve always been a huge fan of his absurdly clever, cleverly absurd comedy.

Rhys Darby and Cori Gonzalez-Macuer are both standouts, Darby for re-enacting his anything-but-calm audition for the Calm app, and Gonzalez-Macuer for his understated but hard-hitting set on anxiety. James Nokise has us chuckling with the political, while Angella Dravid has us blushing with the overtly sexual. Spouting absolute filth while looking like a deer in headlights is a whole mood, and I’m here for it.

Musically we’re spoiled with a few treats, especially from Paul Williams on keys. That voice! His song about the dangers of walking home at night echoes Laura Davis’ wicked set, which disarms the audience by entwining serious issues with laughter. Fresh from Broadway, Jonno Roberts dazzles with a ditty on the difficulties of raising children (to put it mildly), but creeps me out by lusting after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Closing the show is Two Hearts, Laura Daniel and Joseph Moore, with Tummy Rosé. A Kiwi take on The Lonely Island, this musical comedy duo always delivers a banging finale with high production values.

What an outstanding night of standout stand-up.

Things I Know to be True is a poignant story of family, of loss, and of love. The play follows the Price family through the ups and downs of life over the course of a year, broaching problems and situations universally known to every family, to every human. The Price children (played by Heather O’Carroll, Jthan Morgan, Daniel Watterson, and Caitlin Rivers) have grown up and started their own lives, often fiercely independent from their parents, but seem to find themselves more often than not circling back to their childhood home, for advice, help, approval, rebellion, truth, and the comfort that only family can provide.

Things I Know to be True is exquisitely crafted. Each one of the actors portrays genuine, deep, relatable, and very real characters. Lara Macgregor delivers a phenomenal performance as Fran Price, flitting between anger, joy, pride, longing, fear, and devastation as she desperately tries to make the world right for her children. As her counterpart Bob Price, Stephen Lovatt delivers a much more subtle character, enacting a stoic yet utterly tender performance of a devout father and husband.

As the backdrop for the lives of the Price family, set designer Andrew Foster creates the garden world in which the story unfolds. Four rosebushes mark the passing of time and the seasons, changing in size, shape, and foliage throughout the play as we transition between summer and fall, or from one character’s story to the next. Leaves fall from the ceiling as well as real rainwater, making the play alive and dynamic.

Though heart-wrenching, Things I Know to be True is also heart-warming. Life is not perfect for the Price family but it is real. In their lives we see our own, raw and difficult, delicate and utterly beautiful. Through their story we find comfort in knowing that though all of us share heartbreak, we also share resilience and compassion in overcoming it; and this I know to be true.

Fleur Adcock’s poetry left me simply wanting more. The Mermaid’s Purse is imbued with a sense of magical realism. As the reader winds their way through the twists and turns of Adcock’s mind we encounter her memories; meet old friends, attend shows, dinner parties, travel to distant lands while bats and birds fly overhead. The Mermaid’s Purse focuses on memory, tinged with a hint of nostalgia as death, and the predestiny of ageing, dance along the fringes of her poems.

Adcock’s poetry feels like a moment in time, as if she has pulled back the veil shrouding a distant remembrance, and captures the impression of a bygone moment. The Little Theatre Club and In the Cupboard address how a moment is in fact remembered. The latter uses items to evoke a story, the former directly inquires: “how will you remember, my young dears?” Adcock in this particular instance remembers the moment simply through a pair of apple-green tights. Her poems are transient, each one feels like a memory in and of itself.

Many of Adcock’s poems seem to be more about the feeling they evoke rather than the actual subject. Giza for example is not truly about her dress, rather about the memory the dress conjures. Similarly, Porridge tackles grief at the loss of our poet’s friend, using his Pyrex dish as a metonymy for his memory. Perhaps my favourite poem in The Mermaid’s Purse is House, which paints a home through memory, sunsets, kauri flooring, a pōhutukawa planted over the daughter’s umbilical cord, only to conclusively “melt” the house into mere money as the children sell it. Endings seem both a choice and inevitable.

This kind of worldbuilding is almost always reduced to an anticlimax in many of Adcock’s poems, making her collection transformative, circular, and self-aware. Perhaps this tactic is intended to mimic the burden of ageing, something Adcock seems to be reckoning with in her poetry as her words gracefully and rawly wrestle with the inevitable expiration date that is death.

Families are complicated and that is exactly what Jessica Dettmann exposes in her latest novel, This Has Been Absolutely Lovely. The story centres around a large extended family and their struggles surrounding the death of the grandfather. The family events and celebrations that follow are the perfect set-up for serious themes that include heartache, motherhood, unfulfilled dreams, and mental health. It’s not all doom and gloom, as Dettmann does an incredible job of pulling these serious themes together with some witty humour.

The protagonist, Annie, battles endlessly to balance her desire for music stardom with her never-ending duties as a mother. Despite not being a mother, I found the concept of turmoil between one’s pursuit of their dreams and the obligations that come with relationships extremely relatable. Dettmann writes in a poetic way that pulls you tightly into her characters’ psyches.

“She would close her eyes and step off the cliff. Her body hummed with the thrill of the decision. How it would affect her kids, she still didn’t know, but they’d survive. She felt the force of her mother’s unlived dreams behind her, and her daughters’ and her grandparents’ unrealised futures.”

Having said this – and apologies in advance – the characters were absolutely not that lovely for me. With the exception of one or two, I found most of them incredibly irritating and unlikeable. I believe this is what held me back from truly enjoying this book. Selfishness and self-centredness are repeated attributes and felt so turned up at times that they even came off a little unrealistic.

Overall, this book has achieved what it set out to: exposing the complexities and seriousness of family life in an easy-to-read and engaging way. Although I was not fully charmed by the plot, I am certain that this book will tickle many who love dramas and are looking for an easy book to finish and discuss later with friends.

Man Alone tells the story of the main protagonist Johnson who, in the aftermath of World War I, tries to make a new life for himself in New Zealand. We see him drifting from place to place, never staying put for too long and as he calls it, only living for the good times. Unfortunately, the good times soon come to an end, and it isn’t long before Johnson’s way of life is under threat. 

Before you even open the book, your mind is going to be flooded with images of the late, great Barry Crump and the clichéd picture of the southern mountain man: stoic, silent, and individualistic. Johnson exemplifies all of these qualities, minus Crump’s charm and old-fashioned good manners. While I definitely admire him as a character, I just couldn’t get behind him. 

Early on, Johnson is involved in a scuffle during a workers’ protest where he winds up assaulting a policeman, and while making his escape, he steals a hat and scarf from a sleeping vagrant. It is examples like these that made it hard to like him and kept me from seeing him as anything more than a one-dimensional character. Whether that was by design or not, we’ll never know, since Mulgan took his own life in 1945.

Still, I have to acknowledge that Johnson is a product of his time, living in a New Zealand far removed from the one you and I would recognise. Life was harder back then – no internet, no lattes, and if you wanted to fly, you had to have wings! (Domestic travel didn’t become common until the 1950s.)

Ironically, Man Alone’s biggest downfall isn’t in the book itself but its back cover. It essentially gives away the story’s major plot points and unforgivably spoils what could have been a shock ending. 

However, if you can overlook this, then Man Alone is a good example of the literature of its time (1939) and is definitely worth
a look.

For someone who has always been diametrically opposed to science fiction, fantasy, and anything remotely masquerading as such, Monsters in the Garden, with its eclectic mix of short stories and excerpts, was an excellent way to dive right in.

I love that there are names I recognised of well-established New Zealand authors who I have read on occasion, the likes of Margaret Mahy and Witi Ihimaera included. Mahy’s Misrule in Diamond from her unpublished manuscript was everything I never knew I needed: fantasy, princes, court jesters, treacherous siblings, and what could have been a hint of romance that unfortunately may never be explored. I long for what is left of Mahy’s unpublished manuscript and the hidden possibilities within.

Maurice Gee, Keri Hulme, the list goes on. You will find previously unpublished authors sharing their wares here as well. I love the feel of these stories. Phillip Mann flips the lid on iconic characters in The Gospel According to Mickey Mouse, where Mickey Mouse turns dictator and Sherlock Holmes is not as we know him. Editors David Larsen and Elizabeth Knox seem to have no particular rhyme or rhythm to their selection. There’s the weird, the wonderful, and the unsettling in between, all vying for your attention. There’s knitted dolls, and worried sheep. The stories all seem miscellaneous, and perhaps this is what science fiction is all about – strange, weird, assorted, and a challenge to the impossible.

Emma Martin’s In the Forest with Ludmila, about two sisters raised by a disturbed mother and grandmother, felt disconcerting in its violence and unsettling.

I wouldn’t say I am now a convert to all things sci-fi but rather, I’m open to a world where speculative fiction not only lives but thrives; all the better with a uniquely Kiwi feel too. Knox accepts this anthology doesn’t represent all genres, writing “It’s an anthology among anthologies and a good place to start.” For the uninitiated like me, it has been just that.