 reviewed by Penny Dodd 19 Apr 2013 |
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Sublime NZ Opera has turned on a superb, classy production of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. The set is restrained, with Shoji screens separating rooms in a Japanese house, and opening up to reveal a beautiful garden. Production designer Christina Smith creates a feeling of enclosure, of a sheltered restricted existence, which only opens up to the full Aotea stage in the last tragic moments. [more] |
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reviewed by Simon Wilson (Metro-Arts-Auckland) 19 Apr 2013 |
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Breathtakingly beautiful There are fashions in violence – the Pulp Fiction gun held sideways came and went, and now, courtesy of Game of Thrones, there’s the sword slipped vertically inside the neck of the armour and run down into the body. Brutal. NZ Opera’s production of Madame Butterfly is up with that fashion ... [more] |
 BLACK GRACE: VAKA at Lake Wanaka Centre reviewed by Sue Wards 19 Apr 2013 |
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Explosive rhythm and energy Wanaka audiences don't get many opportunities to see contemporary dance shows, but Black Grace's Vaka (as part of the Festival of Colour 2013) is so good it was worth the six year wait since their last visit. [more] |
 reviewed by Gilbert Wong (Metro-Arts-Auckland) 19 Apr 2013 |
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Resoundingly good Playwright Dean Parker has often focussed on social justice and a view from the left. And certainly the story, the possibility that spies were at work in the New Zealand embassy in Moscow in 1947, features in microcosm the great struggle between capitalism and communism in the early days of the Cold War. [more] |
 reviewed by Frances Morton (Metro-Arts-Auckland) 19 Apr 2013 |
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Thought-provoking prelude to Anzac Day The heroics of the Maori Battalion are cemented in our nation’s historical lore. What’s lesser known, is that within the D Company ranks – Ngati Walkabout as it was known – soldiers from the Pacific Islands marched alongside their Maori brothers in arms. [more] |
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reviewed by Heidi North-Bailey 19 Apr 2013 |
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Thought-provoking intrigue with laughter and song played with aplomb Midnight in Moscow is a new play from Dean Parker. Set in 1947, inside the New Zealand Legation in Moscow, 30 years after the Bolshevik revolution it revolves around the public and private lives of the legation staff. The play contrasts the relaxed sociable world inside the Legation, where no-one seems to do much except eat and drink, with the pressured political world of Soviet Russia just beyond their walls. [more] |
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reviewed by Paul Simei-Barton (New Zealand Herald) 19 Apr 2013 |
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From Russia with Kiwi wit, sophistication, intelligence and erudition With John Key's stewardship of the GCSB, farce might be the appropriate form for a Kiwi spy story. But in the hands of playwright Dean Parker the intrigues swirling around New Zealand's Moscow Embassy in 1947 provide the raw material for a sophisticated, entertaining and intelligent piece of theatre. [more] |
 reviewed by James Wenley (Theatre Scenes - Auckland Theatre Blog) 18 Apr 2013 |
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Gay-up Storytelling By placing the play in the context of the marriage equality debate, I do not mean to suggest that Brooks is flying a political flag. Nor is it preachy. Nor does the marriage question play into its drama. It’s political only in that the play presents stories, and says these stories matter. [more] |
 KINGS OF THE GYM at Lake Wanaka Centre reviewed by Jo Blick 18 Apr 2013 |
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Comedy 10 – Boredom Nil; political correctness on detention Drinking during work hours… gambling… skiving off ... Welcome to life as a PE teacher at Hautapu High School, the setting for Kings of the Gym: a play that measures up modern teaching methods, political correctness and religion and sends them off for twenty quick laps of the school field. [more] |
 reviewed by John Smythe 18 Apr 2013 |
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A wonderfully entertaining hour of whacky whimsy In contrast to his stolid – if knife-fearing – Fisherman, the childlike nature of Wakenshaw’s Squidboy does include moments that could be construed as mindless violence. Or are they simply a convenient way of dispensing with something in order to move on to something else? Are we dealing with sociopathic humour here or are we simply liberated by the freedoms of imagination? The very last moment of the show pretty well answers that question – and you will have to see it to get it. [more] |
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