The latest Theatreview Weekly includes reviews of Buskers Go Bad, Stomach, and Crashmob.

See more recent reviews at theatreview.org, the NZ Performing Arts Review & Directory

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MAN MADE A NEW DANCE: Be prepared to wonder

The latest Theatreview Weekly includes reviews of Buskers Go Bad, Stomach, and Crashmob.

See more recent reviews at theatreview.org, the NZ Performing Arts Review & Directory

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MAN MADE A NEW DANCE: Be prepared to wonder
The Long Hall, Roseneath, Wellington
- reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant

Engagement between these two performers is virtually non-existent except in the lithe limbed leanness of bodies. Connew has a loping bounce that seems to always want to burst out of the containment of both the set and the hall; Okan has an earthed quality that pulls him continuously back to his starting point. Engagement with the audience? Very little, although we do get drawn into a surreal banana contest which draws smiles and gasps of admiration, particularly from the dancers in the audience. You have to be there to see this!

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THE DEMOLITION OF THE CENTURY: Sarkies goes for dark and funny
Circa Two, Wellington
- reviewed by Laurie Atkinson [Reproduced with permission of Fairfax Media]

The Circa 2 stage appears to have been turned into a small and neatly arranged recording studio for its current show which is a book reading of extracts from a novel by New Zealand writer, film maker, playwright, short story writer, and stand-up comedian, Duncan Sarkies.

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THE DEMOLITION OF THE CENTURY: A tantalising taste of subjective human experience
Circa Two, Wellington
- reviewed by John Smythe

The way Duncan Sarkies illuminates the human condition in The Demolition of the Century is somewhat redolent of the Beat Poets and fiction writers like Raymond Chandler; he writes Kiwi noir. His onstage persona suggests a Kiwi cousin once removed of Leonard Cohen. Sarkies is the better singer, though.

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BUSKERS GO BAD (R18): Excellently balanced
The Boathouse, Nelson
- reviewed by Gail Tresidder

What a gloriously zany, yet amazingly talented, group of entertainers! A few black marks aside – especially the deafeningly loud and absolutely music-less pre-show music – this capacity crowd laughs and marvels throughout.

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CRASHMOB: Endlessly inventive
Te Kotahitanga Expo Hall, Forum North, Whangarei
- reviewed by David Stevens

We’re never told where it is happening or when it is happening, or even what is happening except at the end, so in a sense it is metaphysical theatre and has a non-too-distant kinship with the Aboriginal concept of the dreaming – or dreamtime – because it is every where and every when while being, at the same time, specific to this group of young people now.

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STOMACH: Powerful play provides plenty for audiences to chew over
BATS Theatre, The Propellor Stage, 1 Kent Tce, Wellington
- reviewed by Laurie Atkinson [Reproduced with permission of Fairfax Media]

Stomach is a strongly performed fifty minute two-hander about the breaking up of an intense relationship between two young women.

It is told with brief monologues, long duologues, a dynamically performed lip-sync song and dance number (a highlight), starting with the breakdown and working its way, with one or two jumps forward, back to the accidental meeting in a library when the relationship started.

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See more recent reviews at theatreview.org.nz, the NZ Performing Arts Review & Directory

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