Music Portrait of a Humble Disabled Samoan paints a vivid picture of its lead creative and performer Fonotī Pati Umaga. Bold and brilliant brushstrokes layer live music, storytelling, dance, and visual design upon the blank canvas of Tāwhiri Warehouse, set up as a theatre-in-the-round with Umaga at its heart. Around him, five performers (Mere Boynton, Paris Tuimaseve-Fox, Lavinia Lovo, Albert Latailakepa, Faithleen Tou) and four musicians (Meka Nehemia, Hayden Nickel, Andy Mauafua, Isitolo Alesana) circle, each dedicated to helping him share his story. Above him hangs a large screen, a white drum lampshade across which celestial lights dance (Jane Hakaraia) and projections play (AV content by Delainy Jamahl, Ella Dove, Josiah Wood). The faces of the people who have shaped his life swim overhead like stars in the sky.

The story starts in the 70s, spiralling galactically through Umaga’s adolescence to the fall that left him tetraplegic at 46 and the battle with depression and addiction that followed. Through music, faith, and force of will, Umaga emerged victorious. Today, he is a respected leader and advocate for the Pacific and disability communities.

Under the direction of Maiava Nathaniel Lees, Music Portrait of a Humble Disabled Samoan is a masterclass in balance. Achingly painful moments – such as the cast’s seated, writhing dance (choreographer Neil Ieremia) to drum and bass music – cause sharp inhalations across the audience. A collective breath is held. Then, perfectly timed humour is injected into the dialogue (Oscar Kightley). Umaga laughs – tender, gentle, such strength in his vulnerability. We release, soften. In these instants of ease, our lungs deflate. They are buoyed once more by uplifting, stunning harmonies (musical director Matuaitoga Posenai Mavaega) or the joyous interaction of instruments as we watch Umaga rediscover bass – a scene that will stick with me forever and that I did not want to end.

As we experience the highs and lows of Umaga’s journey, it feels as if we, too, are cared for by everyone onstage and behind it. Music Portrait Collective (creative producer Sasha Gibb) possesses a meteoric passion for Umaga and his story. It beams through in every second of this production, as bright as the star map that lights his way.

Gloria – A Triple Bill brings together six dancers each from New Zealand and Australia in a triptych of contemporary dance works for the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts.

The first work, Lament, is a world premiere choreographed by The New Zealand Dance Company artistic director Moss Te Ururangi Patterson with a startling original musical score by Shayne P Carter. It reflects on memory, resilience, resistance, and the enduring spirit of Aotearoa through the performers from The New Zealand Dance Company. In loose, comfortable-looking outfits (Chantelle Gerard) and with fluid and dynamic choreography, they are mesmerising to watch as they bring whakapapa into visceral being under elegant golden light (Mark Haslam).

Part two, A Moving Portrait, is an equally engrossing meditation on aging and vulnerability choreographed by Co3 Contemporary Dance Australia founding artistic director Raewyn Hill. Moving to the haunting beauty of Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa Ludus II. Silentium, the Co3 dancers are deliberate, slow, and intimate in their gestures and interactions, flowing over and around one another in diaphanous white costumes (Akira Isogawa) that emphasise the collective nature of the piece. With moments of tenderness and grace, then gentle resistance and even violence, it’s another visually absorbing piece. Haslam again provides beautiful illumination, with the whole work being performed in the confined space of the soft light from an elongated doorway.

The final piece, GLORIA by renowned New Zealand choreographer Douglas Wright, is a joint performance by both companies. It’s accompanied by a contingent from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dr Joseph Nolan, and a 16-strong Voices New Zealand choir led by chorusmaster Michael Stewart, who masterfully perform Antonio Vivaldi’s Gloria in D Major RV 589. This dance work speaks to the stages of life through a series of short pieces featuring recognisable moments from playful childhood with a human skipping rope, to two young men locked in a wrestling match, sensual procreation, and more until, finally, death. More expansive than the two previous works and with a looser synergy between classical music and modern choreography, this work was less intensely engaging than the first two, but no less successful as a glorious example of contemporary dance.

Two-time GRAMMY^® Award-winning male vocal ensemble The King’s Singers have been wowing audiences around the world since 1968. They return to the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts after knockout performances in 2014 and 2018. The gold standard in a cappella singing, they have a back catalogue – as we learn during the performance – of 2776 songs ranging from medieval madrigals to modern masters of jazz, pop, and more. In this performance, one of the last for Christchurch-born baritone Chris Bruerton, we’re treated to the full breadth of their capabilities in a programme of two distinct halves.

Appropriately for the cathedral setting, the first half was entitled Angels and Demons and centred on these popular figures of Christian iconography, alongside the Virgin Mary and Christ. Using these four symbols plus Geoffrey Poole’s dramatic Wymondham Chants written in the 1970s for inspiration, this section collected together choral music from over 500 years to explore the light and darkness of the human experience.

The King’s Singers’ exceptional timing and purity and balance of tone shone through in all the diverse pieces, especially so in the third part of the Demons section, William Byrd’s Miserere mei Deus. Here, each voice perfectly delivered the complex and elegant six-part harmony into a sublime whole. Geoffrey Poole’s epilogue Blessed Jesu was performed partly in the cathedral’s ambulatory, giving it a stunningly ethereal quality.

Following a fun reworking of the overture to The Barber of Seville, the second half was devoted to the group’s favourite arrangements of gospel, jazz, and pop songs, including the most requested in their library, Billy Joel’s And So It Goes. They chose two songs particularly for Wellington. The first, called Whina Said, was composed by Robert Wiremu for the group and beautifully reimagined speeches by Dame Whina Cooper. After a long and hugely deserved standing ovation, they finished with a delectably arranged encore of Pōkarekare Ana.

Fully living up to their reputation for unrivalled technique, musicianship, and versatility, The King’s Singers delighted and excelled yet again.

Wellington rock legend Julia Deans received news none of us ever wants to hear: that she had a stage 4 malignant tumour in the roof of her mouth. For a consummate chanteuse who has built her life around her voice, this news was cataclysmic. Deans’ not-yet-released album Goliath traces her personal journey with cancer from diagnosis to recovery and lays bare its highs and lows in raw-edged song.

With an inauspiciously late kick-off, which Deans ascribed to “the monkeys in my brain telling me it was an 8 o’clock start”, we were underway once the hastily summoned latecomers – including the other two-thirds of Fur Patrol – had scurried in. The muttered grumbles from the row behind me soon turned into murmurs of empathy as Deans began her story. While ruggedly truthful, Goliath is a passionate ode to the people she met along the way, her friends and family, medical experts, and her fellow wayfarers.

Ranging from aching ballads to fiery rock, each song describes a waypoint along the emotional road of cancer that will be familiar to anyone who’s travelled it or supported someone who has. For those lucky enough to not be among the one in four who will experience cancer first-hand, Goliath is an education in resilience.

With unbridled authenticity, Deans held her audience captivated. Clearly, the disease that could have ruined her career was successfully obliterated as her vocal range is exceptional, soaring from throaty rock notes to soft soprano to a Julie Andrews opera moment. With just her guitar for accompaniment, the stripped-back songs and vivid commentary in between revealed for the first time in public the weight of what Deans has been through.

Pushed forwards on the large Tāwhiri Warehouse stage, the intimate performance was augmented by beautifully responsive interpretation into NZSL, large pot plants, and lovely lighting that vibed with the emotions of each song.

Goliath and Deans’ honest delivery of it demonstrates wholeheartedly that the cancer ‘battle’ is so much more nuanced than that cliché can ever express.

The Great Hall of Massey University adds another layer of grandeur to this Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts show. From the high ceilings to the great acoustics, we are fully immersed in the multimedia performance of Voices at the End, which offers a social commentary on our shared future and the present day through the use of composition, the written word, and cinema.

In the hands of London-based pianist Dawn Hardwick, Greek New Zealand composer John Psathas’ compositions – the titular Voices at the End and Second-Hand Time – come to life. Psathas’ score encapsulates key emotions, from sardonic undertones to all-encompassing dread to a heartfelt sense of hope. 

The pieces take us on a journey through the present and potential future. The musical performance works well on its own, yet pairs perfectly with Kenyon Shankie’s film and visual works. Both are timed impeccably; when urgency is presented visually, we can also hear it through Hardwick’s performance. 

Voices at the End will move you and get you thinking about not just the world we live in, but the world the next generation will inherit. It provides us with a sense of immediacy to take action whilst instilling hope that we can endure the ever-increasing impact of conflict and climate change in the present day. The production raises critical concepts we should all consider, such as how violence has become entertainment and the idea of citizenship in today’s world. My one criticism is that during the first act, it becomes difficult to read the text that is set low down on the screen, as it is sometimes obstructed by other audience members. 

This is the only planet that we inhabit in the entire cosmos, and if we destroy it, we may never find another place to call home. Voices at the End begs us to make haste to enact change, but not in a way that is overwhelming. It is a wake-up call that I hope everyone can experience.

Khalid Abdalla’s astonishing solo work Nowhere melds the personal and playful into the roar of unbearable injustices across global and historic scales. Rooted in his involvement in the 2011 Egyptian revolution and the counter revolution that followed, Abdalla weaves parallel narratives of his patrilineal history, global colonial dynamics, and the friendship he formed with a fellow artist lost to pancreatic cancer.

A core value of the work is the reclamation of play and creativity, both as personal necessity and a force for resistance. Abdalla embodies this sense of possibility. His physicality is impeccable across naturalistic acting, stylised movement sequences, technical tricks, and gorgeous, bashfully vulnerable dance sequences (choreographer Omar Rajeh).

The production features the most cohesive integration of projections (video designer Sarah Readman), live filming, and shadow work (lighting designer Jackie Shemesh) that I have seen. Importantly, these techniques resonate in a story invested in documentation, filmmaking, visual art, and resistance through online content. This means the form does more than support the material, it enacts it, creating a highly functional and coherent storytelling world.

Surrealism threads through the piece, evoking the unbearable stagnation of political hopelessness, and creating strange-wondrous avenues of escape. Abdalla looms over landscapes, is crushed in his Cairo flat, and dwarfed by crashing waves. He is subjected to his viciously critical inner monologue on loudspeaker (sound designer Panos Chountoulidis) and plays his father and grandfather conversing with each other about political imprisonment alongside English subtitles.

Pacing is expertly managed, with lightness and quiet breaking up the intensity. At one point we are invited to look under our seats, where we each find an envelope containing a mirror, pencil, and paper. Abdalla encourages us to draw ourselves by looking only into the mirror, letting the hand roam without correction. Donated drawings will join drawings from audiences around the world as part of a wider art project.

Gradually, more didactic passages develop, but these feel earned. Alongside regimes, colonists, and genocides the work insistently holds space for beauty, grief, love, and play at the scale of the individual.

This Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts sees the return of a powerful chronicle of the spiritual and cultural trauma of leaving home. Hone Kouka was commissioned to write Waiora Te Ūkaipo – The Homeland for the 1996 festival and its revival now is as deeply personal, emotionally affecting, and relevant as it was then. It’s become a landmark piece of Aotearoa New Zealand theatre exploring the impact of colonisation, urban drift, and the tension between past and future that feels prescient in the current political climate of this country.

Set in the summer of 1965, the narrative concerns Hone (Regan Taylor) who has relocated his family from the East Cape to the South Island in search of a better life for them through his job at a sawmill. His wife Sue (Erina Daniels) holds everything together while older daughter Amiria (Rongopai Tickell) creates havoc and Boyboy (Te Mihi Potae) tries his best to please. As they gather near a beach for a birthday hāngi for their withdrawn youngest daughter Rongo (Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne) with two Pākehā guests (Ben Ashby and Mycah Keall), secrets, heartbreak, and cultural tensions bubble to the surface and burst in ways that will ripple through their lives forever. Watching, responding to, and echoing the emotional ebb and flow of the day’s events are four tīpuna (Anatonio Te Maioha, Awerangi Thompson, Huia Rawiri, and Mathieu Boynton-Rata).

Working on Mark McEntyre’s cleverly sculptured set under Natasha James’ brilliantly responsive lighting design, this cast is electric. Their family dynamics are clearly communicated through sharp characterisations and their rendering of Kouka’s crackling dialogue. They particularly shine during the muscular waiata and haka (composer Hone Hurihanganui) that weave through the story to punctuate the emotional climaxes. Ngatai-Melbourne’s singing voice is sublime, and her thread of the story stitches the whole together until it profoundly squeezes the heart of its audience.

As Kouka stated before writing the play: “Everyone is from somewhere else.” Waiora Te Ūkaipo – The Homeland is for all who have ever felt dispossessed.

Tonight, the lofty pastel interior of Wellington Cathedral is transformed by a roiling haze of dry ice and shifting colour. SoundCathedral marks the 40^th anniversary of The Tudor Consort with an immersive performance installation of remarkable scale. It brings together 56 musicians: The Tudor Consort directed by Michael Stewart, the taonga pūoro collective Rangatuone Ensemble conducted by Riki Pirihi, and Stroma alongside organist Max Toth and bellringers Dylan Thomas and Jamie Ben.

SoundCathedral reimagines Orlande de Lassus’ Prophetiae Sibyllarum, a cycle of 16^th‑century motets known for their curious harmonic tensions and eccentric chromatics, features that make them feel experimental and cutting edge even to modern ears.

Promotional materials encouraged audiences to wander the cathedral and experience the soundscapes from multiple vantage points. But when we arrive the nave is tightly filled with seating, and moving would require disturbing rows of people. Musicians occupy the aisles, but it is unclear whether the audience may enter their space. With no mention of movement in the welcome address, all the audience I can see remain seated.

Following a karakia and karanga, the choir enters through the central aisle, layering fragments from Lassus’ opening motet, material that blossoms in a cathedral. Subsequent movements stretch and reframe the originals, drawing out new colours.

The most compelling moments occur when voices and instruments venture into the unfamiliar: quiet throat‑singing from a walking soloist, the whirr of porotiti and pūrerehua, breathy winds billowing around the ceiling, a saxophonist clicking keys behind us.

Often, the deconstructed choral passages drift into meditative inertia. I suspect being able to move and find variations of resonance and distortion in the space would have kept these sections vivid. The range of taonga pūoro utilised is wonderful but I didn’t feel that the composition meaningfully integrated these instruments into the overall architecture of the work.

In the finale, the cathedral bells sound as if from another century, astonishingly distant and ethereal. The hefty, almost menacing organ is wondrous, but we are given barely whiffs of it before returning to ennui. I feel that, tantalisingly, a sublime experience has just escaped us.

Saksham’s Magical Madness is exactly what the title suggests: a 60-minute magic show that is indeed madness. A master of illusion, Saksham Sharma presents us with a multitude of tricks, some of which could confound even the most avid magic enthusiast. From classic sleights of hand with cards to predicting the future through drawings, this show has something that I am sure will pique the interest of all viewers.

Our magician in question is incredibly charismatic and charming, hooking us in from the moment he walks on stage until the moment he leaves. It is satisfying to see how many people he involves to participate in his tricks, including myself. Equally, it is refreshing to see all ages enjoying the show. There is loud cheering and clapping throughout, no doubt a reflection of the joy the audience feels.

Saksham also reminds us that even though machines are rising up around us, they cannot take wonder away from us; we can still choose the joy that magic brings. This is what epitomises the show: pure joy. Magical Madness is engaging and entertaining the entire time, making us want more. At the same time, it is not your ordinary magic show. There are no rabbits coming out of hats, nor are there people sawn in half. Instead, Saksham uses technology to his advantage, utilising even our own cell phones to perform his tricks. The use of lighting and projection (show design by Saksham and producer Taruna) heightens the tension and excitement, which builds and builds right up till the explosive grand finale.

I am in awe of the final act and how it ties the entire show together, from the disappearing key and note to the drawings of the elephant. This New Zealand Fringe Festival show offers a fantastic night out that you won’t want to end. Ensure you get tickets to Saksham’s Magical Madness before it disappears from The Hannah.