I don’t think I’ve ever before used the word “groundbreaking” to describe a book! I’m using it now because I’m reading Secret Art Powers by Jo Randerson. This book is so overwhelming that I had to stop reading it at intervals to fully experience and come to terms with my feelings of joyful recognition. I am a theatre practitioner and reviewer, so Randerson’s reflections, experiences, and observations, grounded in their love of theatre, resound especially strongly. That said, there is a wealth of material to interest and challenge other readers and even quirky illustrations “crowdsourced during sessions of group drawing”, Randerson acknowledges in their foreword.

“Art is a way of being,” Randerson continues, and this volume goes on to expand on that theme, and perhaps even more importantly, on its implications. The six powers they write about are explored – one might even say exploited – in the interests of art and the artist. None more so perhaps than their first power, which they title Lies. What could lies have to do with art? Plenty, Randerson asserts. Many truths exist and they are sometimes in conflict with each other. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple”, as Oscar Wilde wrote in The Importance of Being Earnest. And art can and does describe realities that have their own truth.

The secular world, and the political one, have difficulty with such a wide-ranging concept. Witness the pitifully small financial support given to artistic endeavours in this country compared to the vast amounts allotted to sport! I’m tempted to say that those in charge of such decisions suffer from a severe lack of imagination, sensitivity, and any valuing of the place of emotional response.

What does exaggeration in a theatre piece matter if it makes an important point? Why shouldn’t irony and satire be acceptable as ways of exposing wrong or corruption? These and similar arguments are skilfully and passionately presented by Randerson in their six parts: Lies is followed by Fluidity, Multiplicity, Wrong, Live, and Imagination.

Secret Art Powers has the subtitle: How creative thinking can achieve radical change. This book is a giant step in that direction.

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!

This concert continues Orchestra Wellington’s season-long exploration of the works of Dmitri Shostakovich, spoiling us with the Aotearoa premiere performance of his Symphony No. 2 in B major, Op. 14 October. This challenging work epitomises a precious and precarious time in the composer’s career, when he was still the beneficiary of state support. October was commissioned by the Propaganda department of the State Music Publishing house to mark the 10^th anniversary of the October Revolution.

The orchestra opens with low muttering strings, a chaotic ferment of pregnant tension. Music director Marc Taddei’s command of the symphony’s moods and mutations is masterful, and the audience clings on through tempestuous, whirling themes and an almost sarcastic march. Brass shines throughout, glutting on variations of liminal and mocking tonalities. This crucible of sound is collapsed instantly by the wail of a factory siren, a simultaneously otherworldly and industrial interruption that summons the choir (Orpheus Choir Wellington) for the rousing and bizarrely banal finale.

In the interlude that follows, our conductor confesses into the microphone, “Bonkers is the word for this music”.

This is a night of delights for the Russophiles, with Shostakovich set alongside his fellow countrymen, 19^th-century greats Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It’s smart programming – opening with the melodic refusals and polyphony of October allows for the full shock value of the work to ring out, and makes the lyricism of the following pieces all the more pleasing.

Celebrated pianist Jian Liu joins the orchestra for Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 75 and delights us with his adept and sensitive playing. The evening closes with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, a tone poem whose endless harmonic invention and reinvention on the same seductive tunes conjures the plenty of the Arabian Nights. Concertmaster Amalia Hall winds balletically through the yearning violin melodies, complemented by dynamic section soloists, including a deliciously expressive oboe. We leave Favoured Son stimulated, satiated, and eager to see where this season’s narrative takes us next.

This is Rebekah Burgess’ third poetry collection. She is described as being “possessed by a genuine poetic spirit”, and reading Hope Floats, I found myself agreeing. “Genuine” is surely important and in this case signifies the sincerity of undisguised emotion and a welcome lack of intellectualising feelings and experiences. Missing is trendy social commentary and smart clichés about nothing in particular.

The first of the three sections is titled The opposite of love is fear. The initial poem Reduced is one of her most powerful. About her mother “screaming for her own voice”, it embodies not just her mother’s plight but that of others, especially women, at the mercy of circumstances beyond their control. Strawberries (should be a celebration) makes reference to COVID lockdowns and creates a metaphor memorable for its aptness.

In the second section, titled Peace, a lengthy poem commemorates Burgess’ great-grandfather Donal. The first two lines “The intoxication / Of a country life” set us up for nostalgia, wistfulness, and gratitude. If anything could entice us to exchange our urban life for a rural one, this would be it!

Speaking of rural, we get a centrepiece of prose that amounts to a brief autobiography expanding on the writer’s thankfulness for such a life. It concludes, however, with regret and warnings of the present times and their intimations for a doomed future. We forgot continues the theme, concluding with “we must remember / what life was / our gains / (not social) / are damned / ill-got.” An especially powerful photo emphasises this theme.

Motherhood consists of experiences and reflections on that theme. What a woman carries borders on the philosophical: “just as the one that made me / was always in my mother, /and the one that made her / was always in her mother.”

The suggestion embodied in Burgess’ title is where our writer is coming from. Her cover photo enhances it. Thankfully without anger, aggressiveness, or fancy language, she embroiders her theme with a needle blunted by gentleness and – well – hope.  

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.

Part of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s annual Setting Up Camp programme, Masterworks will be off on a brisk tour to Blenheim, Nelson, Manukau City, and Kerikeri. I once came across the NZSO and its impressive logistics at Blenheim airport but hadn’t really thought about musical preparation. The artistic team must create a programme to engage audiences who have the luxury of attending live performances often, and excite those who have few of those opportunities. Enter Masterworks: Mozart & Beethoven.

Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No.1 opened with the evocative Morning Mood. A lightness of tone was especially apparent in Anitra’s Dance, where delicate pizzicato was matched by nimble bowing.

NZSO concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s performance of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 was the evening’s highlight. As CE Marc Feldman told us in his well-pitched introduction, this concerto is from the time Mozart was starting to mature, aged 19. Leppänen delivered a calm, composed performance. His cadenzas were beautifully played, delicate, graceful, and expressive, not letting youth run away with a moment in the spotlight. His solo passages were executed thoughtfully and through the second and third movements we could feel him leading and bringing the orchestra with him much more than just being accompanied by them. This is also testament to admirable restraint on Judd’s part, letting the whole of the NZSO do what they do best.

The many layers of Briar Prastiti’s The Garden were atmospheric and complex. In nature ‘the more you look the more you see’ can also be true in music when ‘the more you listen the more you hear’.

Feldman told us Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, Pastoral, was modern for its time. If you listen beyond the pastoral themes, you can hear a modernity in the Allegro, where syncopation, dynamics, and orchestration have a ‘Beethoven feel’ and contrast with the idyllic other movements. Every resolution to the theme is different (but similar) and Judd accentuated this with a different dynamic for each.

Cheese.

That’s all anyone had to say to get me seated in front of Holy Cow, a coming-of-age dramedy screening as part of French Film Festival Aotearoa. But it was not simply the promise of comté that filled my tummy with warm fuzzies – rather a certain je ne sais quoi only a sun-soaked, nostalgic French summer story can conjure that nourished my soul.

Holy Cow comes to Aotearoa hot on the heels of two wins at this year’s César Awards, over one million admissions in France, and an official Festival de Cannes Youth Award. The debut feature film from part-time farmer Louise Courvoisier curdles around 18-year-old Totone (Clément Faveau). He lives in the picturesque Jura region in south-eastern France – an area renowned for its dairy farms, agricultural festivals, and award-winning comté cheese – but he just wants to have fun with his friends, get drunk, and chase mademoiselles. However, after a devastating tragedy, he must grow up quick to care for his seven-year-old sister Claire (Luna Garret).

His solution to their dwindling funds? Follow in his family’s cheesemaking footsteps and win the €30,000 Comté Prize. The only problem is, Totone has never made cheese in his life.

At once delicate and coarse, Holy Cow’s hardened exterior gives way to a soft, gooey centre, a distinctive flavour oozing forth in morsels of cheeky charm as tender relationships form between Totone and his sister, friends, and Marie-Lise (Maïwene Barthelemy), a local dairy farmer. The young cast shine in a blunt, honest, and raw portrayal of character. Their authenticity shines through, appearing as comfortable on screen as at a summer fête and delivering a performance both fragile and complex. The long cuts (editor Sarah Grosset) between scenes allow the characters to live in each moment and for the audience to join them in their musings and mishaps.  

With what I can only describe as a banging summer soundtrack full of vigour and vivacity composed by Linda and Charles Courvoisier and hazy albeit saturated cinematography (Elio Balezeaux) that captures the intensity of the teenage experience, Holy Cow serves up the perfect bite of freshness, fun, fervour, and fromage.

In Everything She Wanted, the opposite of the title turns out to be true. The ex-‘boyfriend’ of the past became everything author Martinette Williams didn’t want. In her debut novel, she carefully unfolds what feels like a time capsule from a period of her life that until this book, she had been yet to put to bed. Inspired by her own journals and songs written 10 years prior, Williams has created characters based on her real-life story.

Everything She Wanted centres on Madeline and the intoxicating pull of Daniel, a twenty-something musician that she is undeniably drawn to time and time again. Despite being pushed and pulled like a puppet on a string, she’s the underdog in a carefully engineered sport where one minute she’s a friend, the next an all-out friend with benefits, a pseudo girlfriend, a ‘pretty girl’, a close confidante, the next a nobody. Michael, Daniel’s best friend, finds himself a witness to the unhealthy relationship, wishing he could be with Madeline and do better.

Madeline’s journey of self-discovery recollects the heady, youthful feelings of passion and desire for relationships to be the stuff movies are made of but rarely ever are.  

Williams, a singer-songwriter and now published author, has included five songs she wrote back in 2012, each fraught with the feelings and words born of riding such an emotional roller coaster. All her songs can be streamed online by readers on SoundCloud. When Daniel tells her she’s not the right girl for him, and never will be, Madeline pens the song Everything I Wanted. The first two lines really sum up the song and the book.

“You were everything I wanted, just sitting there.
I couldn’t stay away – I’d follow anywhere.”

Something quirky and distinctive happens when a musician becomes an author and vice versa, opening up a whole new artistic lens. Williams offers a unique opportunity to take a pause from the page to instead listen and absorb the musicality of her words and the emotions deeply rooted and rendered throughout.

Everything She Wanted is a cathartic narrative of a story left untold, but one that’s weighed the heaviest.

Don’t be put off by the esoteric title of this remarkable collection. ‘Cycle’ is the operative word: each essay describes fascinating ways in which the present can be read in the past. We’re talking fossils here, dear reader. The distribution of ammonite fossils, for example, helps scientists to map previous iterations of our world, asserts audiovisual archivist and author Una Cruickshank.

‘Previous iterations’ have wide-ranging implications. I found one of the most riveting in the essay titled Waste. Sperm whales are under the microscope here – metaphorically speaking. Their voracious appetites involve ingesting octopus and squid amongst other delicacies. Trouble is the giant squid’s body includes indigestible parts like beak and eye lens. And what happens to those? If you’re amongst the fashionable rich whose perfume preference is Chanel, don’t read on! Waste indeed.

We are beholden to whales for many things: Cruickshank lists 20. Next time you ingest vitamins, use a tennis racket or a fishing rod, wear a corset, or open a parasol, spare a thought for the creature responsible for its beginnings.

A Little Spark May Yet Remain has as its opening sentence: “There were countless ways to die before your time in 18^th century London”, surely a reader enticement. Frequent drownings gave rise to an exploration of various ways to revive or resuscitate – one of the most notable being that of the thwarted suicide of Mary Wollstonecraft, who went on to write A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. A little spark in that case became a big one.

Later, electricity in the form of shocks and even electric eels to revive the dead captured the imagination as well as the pockets of the wealthy. As a sideline, we are informed that “London pornographers began offering electric eel erotica”. Well, there’s nothing like sex to revive the spirit!

Cruickshank says she wrote the book to ward off “existential dread”. She may not have succeeded in such a lofty aim but her meticulously researched and idiosyncratic findings will surely offer a welcome respite.  

It doesn’t matter how long you have been away or where you have been, returning home is one of those emotions you feel more deeply than you can easily describe. Douglas Lilburn’s Aotearoa Overture has fleeting influences of his composition teacher, Ralph Vaughan Williams, but there is something distinctive in the tone which evokes the Aotearoa Lilburn was returning to. The violins led the drama, crisp with the jagged theme introducing the building sound of the orchestra. We are a laconic lot – sometimes it’s better to let our great musical interpreters tell the world how we feel about coming home.

Béla Bartók, and violinist Amalia Hall, wrenched at the heartstrings in Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2. Bartók incorporated folk music and classical traditions into his compositions and the concerto features great harmonic variety and demanding work for the soloist. Hall took it all in her stride and the cadenza was an excellent showcase for her skill, musicality, and energy. The orchestra, under the expert baton of Gábor Káli, swelled and flowed and burst through the violin to great effect.

Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 in D Minor is dramatic, majestic, and intense. Káli led the orchestra brilliantly, finding every opportunity to bring melodies to the fore, guiding perfect execution of complex rhythms, changes in mood, dynamics, tempo, and tone. He managed an exceptional equilibrium, so the solos, pairs, and sections of the orchestra were perfectly clear and balanced and not in competition with each other. Some of this is down to Dvorák’s great composition but a conductor’s interpretation is what shapes the performance and the way the players follow the lead is what makes the experience on the night. By the end Káli had given his all and, utterly exhausted, supported himself on the podium for the final, deliberate, quickening, foot-stamping, big embrace of a homecoming in the closing bars.

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”.

In the state of delusion that comes from watching a show that starts at 9:45pm, we are presented with one of the most unhinged pieces of comedy I may ever witness. The comedy duo Ginge & Minge (Nina Hogg and Megan Connolly) open the doors to the House of Ick. Comprising a wide range of skits with outrageous yet relatable characters, this 50-minute sketch show is a rollicking good ride exploring all those things that give us ‘the ick’.

Hogg and Connolly play off each other’s energy excellently and are masters of physical comedy. They embody their zany characters with no holds barred. Not only are they great comedians, but they also show off many other talents – such as in their number featuring an interpretive tap dance to a poem simplified for the modern mind. Both are also strong vocalists.

Just when you think things have already reached the maximum level of mad, Hogg and Connolly push things even further. Not only does it get wilder, but it also gets messier. I have never seen such a messy show, and I do not envy whoever has to clean whatever ‘ick’ is left behind by this hilarious pair. This is a sensory experience – we see, smell, and hear many things that make us want to vomit (in the best way possible).

The set (designed by the duo themselves) also impresses. It provides a great backdrop for quick changes and houses the plethora of props used in the show for one comedic purpose or another. I’m still trying to process how these two manage to include so much comedy in such a short time.

As you exit the theatre a different person, House of Ick certainly leaves an impression. I mean that literally – the stamp they give the audience at the end of the show will stay on my hand for days. The ink is incredibly strong. See for yourself just what this crazy show can do for you.

Booth the Clown and Jak Darling’s Delightfool is an absurdist queer cabaret exploit, featuring stand-up, mime, musical comedy, magic, and flightless birds. Jak Darling is gorgeous, embodying the feminine in a series of elegant mid-century gowns and a Freddie Mercury-esque moustache. They bring sultry vulnerability, masterful storytelling, and piss gags. Booth presents as more of a crass uncle type, and their astonishing physical control and comedic precision allow them to make a meal out of simple jokes.

There is plenty of raunchy, shock-value comedy. But the more dreamlike and bizarre acts are what I find most effective. Booth’s sailor vs seagulls mime features a sublime and surprisingly beautiful underwater sequence, during which the character comes close to drowning. Booth utilises the audience’s growing concern for maximum comedic payoff. Later, in an act of supreme silliness, Booth and Jak wrap themselves in sheets and transform into a pair of white emus lip-syncing Delibes’ Flower Duet.

There are subtle undercurrents of grimmer themes; the story is set against the backdrop of an impending storm. Radio newscasts repeatedly warn that the situation is deteriorating, a motif that resonates with climate catastrophe and rising queerphobic hostility. This sits nicely in an Isherwoodian understanding of cabaret as a queer artform, and bastion of genderplay and joy. Eventually the storm builds to a cacophony of wind and noise (composer Kodi Rasmussen) that threatens to destroy the theatre and imperil the final act.

But Booth and Jak manage to pitch a tent, creating an opportunity for shadow play as their figures are backlit against the tent fabric. Through the darkest hours of the storm, the audience spy on their vulnerable soul searching before they emerge to announce that the storm has passed, and the magic tricks can proceed as planned.

Delightfool is delightfully silly, well crafted, and brilliantly executed. Booth and Jak are darlings, and well deserving of their 2025 NZ International Comedy Festival Billy T Award nomination.

Lily Catastrophe, the multitalented comedian and cabaret aficionado, has gifted us with an encore season of her mesmerising one-woman show Bottom Surgery. From sultry stripteases to dramatic readings of diary entries, Lily uses every tool in her bedazzled box to keep the audience hooked as she shares the intimate, ridiculous, and poignant story of her medical transition and pursuit of bottom surgery in Aotearoa.

Lily’s outstanding crowd work has us eating out of her hand from the intro. Although mostly a solo show, Calum Redpath supports as stage manager, exuberant MC voiceover, and occasional reluctant side character. The show is a masterful blend of irreverence and earnestness, balancing humour with serious emotional punches. Lily navigates these contrasts through a series of cabaret numbers interspersed with skits, creating a dynamic piece with oodles of momentum. She doesn’t shy away from the more complex parts of her experiences – the times she felt doubt or the risks associated with the surgery – but she places this in a broader context and helps us to understand why trans healthcare is essential healthcare.

Lily’s use of props is fantastically funny and effective. The fundamentals of the surgical procedures are explained through the peeling and mushing of a banana, while the removal of gauze from a neo-vagina is demonstrated with endless red feather boas being drawn out of a heart-shaped box.

There are perfectly observed character acts too, such as when Lily takes on the persona of a rejection letter from the Ministry of Health. She nails the performatively caring and patronising tone, eliciting laughter and outraged gasps from the audience.

Towards the end of the performance, Lily makes an impassioned statement about the rising hostility towards trans folks, grounding the night’s absurdities with a sense of urgency and significance. Then she brings us home with a rousing singalong to Chapell Roan’s queer joy anthem Pink Pony Club.

Bottom Surgery is a testament to Lily Catastrophe’s talent, wit, and resilience. Her ability to blend humour, emotion, and social commentary makes for a powerful and unforgettable show.

From being appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1994 to being the first New Zealander elected to the International Court of Justice in 2006, I think it is safe to say that Kenneth Keith’s work as a barrister and judge has hit all the highs it possibly could. It is fitting then that he would write Without Fear or Favour: A Life in Law, a book that delves deep into the intricacies of law.

In this memoir, we learn about international law and how it can apply to the laws we have at home, plus how it affects Te Tiriti o Waitangi in New Zealand. The breadth of Keith’s knowledge truly astounds as he digs into issues such as human and information rights, piracy, and much more. He has great passion and respect for the law, and it is clear to see why: without proper safeguards to protect us, everything would be thrown into chaos and the somewhat peaceful life that we have all grown accustomed to would literally go up in smoke.

My favourite part of the book was learning how international and national law interacted with each other and sometimes overlapped. I appreciated the real-world examples Keith gave, which made me realise how immensely complicated it all is, and how much hard work a barrister has to go through to get the job done. 

My only negative is that if you do not know much about law or are uninterested in the nitty gritty of it all, you may not be able to follow everything in this book. But if you keep at it like me – a reader with no legal background – I think you’ll be able to overcome these obstacles and enjoy what is on offer here. My recommendation is that if you have an interest in law, give Without Fear or Favour: A Life in Law a go because there can be no greater teacher than Kenneth Keith.