A selection of reviews from Theatreview from the last week including: Dracula, Homo-Interneticus, The Prospect, and Do You Still Think Of Me.
 
See more recent reviews at theatreview.org, the NZ Performing Arts Review & Directory.

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Hagley Open Stage, Christchurch - HOMO-INTERNETICUS: All possibilities exhausteed
- reviewed by Kate Sullivan

As each piece is revealed, it is clear that these choreographers have truly exhausted all the possibilities within the major theme. Especially for a group of such young dancers (some as young as sixteen and seventeen), they have considered some mature and insightful concepts. Areas such as Wikipedia, technological dependency, Skype, internet speed and finding fame on YouTube are all covered in the student’s works. The use of various production technologies are integrated well into the pieces and enhance the students ideas. During ‘Profile’, choreographed by Eden Roberts, the dancers draw chalk boxes around each other to highlight the idea of how a person’s identity can be determined by people’s perceptions of your Facebook page. This chalk is soon rubbed off by the dancers sliding and wriggly onto the stage from all over the theatre in some of the following pieces.

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Gryphon, Wellington - THE PROSPECT: Good Prospect
- reviewed by Michael Wray

The Prospect manages something so few theatre productions find possible: it makes the Gryphon Theatre a warm and vibrant place. It’s the first time I’ve seen a traverse stage setting at this venue and with the packed audience filling both sides of the auditorium, a positive atmosphere of anticipation was generated. The Prospect, written by Maraea Rakuraku and directed by Tammy Davis, lives up to the buzz.

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BATS, Wellington - HOLDING ON: Show packed with punch
- reviewed by Lynn Freeman

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, the five stages of grief. Gavin McGibbon brings together five people who’ve been ‘touched by the dead’. Some were loved ones, others strangers. These five all have their own ways of trying to deal with life after death.

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Paramount, Wellington - DO YOU STILL THINK OF ME: Wacky theatre refreshes
- reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant

Late night, spacious picture theatre, eclectic crowd, two wonderfully irreverent and disparate artistic thinkers come together for an essentially ‘theatre of the absurd’ performance.

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Basement Studio, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland - GODDESS AND MAB’S ROOM: New Voice, Amplified
- reviewed by James Wenley

Playwright Sam Brooks’ work concerns itself with identity, the mechanics of interaction, and an intense focus on what pulls people together... and apart.

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Basement Studio, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland - GODDESS AND MAB’S ROOM: An astute eye for the human condition
- reviewed by Nik Smythe

Newcomer playwright / producer Sam Brooks has most ambitiously mounted not one, but two full productions of his original works, taking advantage of both the economic viability and functional versatility of the upstairs Basement studio space.

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Downstage - return season, Wellington - MICHAEL JAMES MANAIA: A richly textured modern classic
- reviewed by John Smythe

Grief, guilt and anger is a potent cocktail and because it shocks us with its insights, truth and humanity, it produces bursts of comedy too. I rarely resort to ‘tour de force’ to describe a performance but here, how better to describe Te Kohe Tuhaka’s compulsive (for him) and compelling (for us) tour of duty through the tormented mind of Michael James Manaia.

Having seen it during this year’s NZ International Arts Festival, the first thing to note about the brief fund-raising return to Downstage of this Taku Rua production, directed by Nathaniel Lees – en route to Auckland, Whangarei, New Plymouth and Melbourne – is that it is 25 minutes shorter, plays without an interval and is even better for it.

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TAPAC Theatre, Western Springs, Auckland - BEAUTIFUL LOSERS: The Coming and Going of Age
- reviewed by Matt Baker

As soon as I entered the TAPAC theatre I was struck the realisation that I had seen Beautiful Losers nearly 10 years earlier when it premiered at the Silo Theatre with Ian Hughes and Scott Wills. Wills is reprising his role as Neal Cassady… And 10 years is a long time. While this can bring additional depth to an actor, it inevitably ages them dramatically. An actors’ actual age is not important, but their playing age is, and sitting in the mid-30 to mid-40 decade range, as Paul Glover (Jack Kerouac) and Wills are, they are at the high end for these characters ...

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Fale Pasifika, University of Auckland, Auckland - EN ROUTE - COME TO: Exceptionally varied and well-programmed
- reviewed by Anna Bate

That was in tents, is the puntastic title of Kelly Nash’s new work. A playful choreography performed by a quietly attentive group of five dancers: Georgie Goater, Jessie McCall, Molly McDowell, Lydia Zanetti and Lydia Bittner-Baird. The louder performers in this work are jandals and tents. These objects are animated as the dancers pass through a series of tasks in relation to them. I enjoy this shift in focus from human bodies to the liveliness and personalities of objects. I was excited to see a work that prioritizes and investigates the choreographic potential of other material bodies within the frame of En-route. They were becoming tents. I feel that there is more scope for play and experimentation with this work and that this will easily emerge as the performers become more familiar with their materials.

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Bruce Mason Centre, Auckland - THE TOWER SEASON OF CINDERELLA: Finesse and refinement
- reviewed by Jenny Stevenson

Green’s performance evolves throughout the evening as she reveals the depths of her technique – culminating in the fiendishly fast solo in Act II which she pulls off without loss of composure. Her lovely arabesque becomes the default position – a young girl yearning and reaching out for something more. Green’s romantic duets with the Prince, danced by Qi Huan, grow in assurance and connection throughout the evening, so that the final pas-de-deux with its swooning lifts shows a young woman who has let down her defences and surrendered to love.

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Expressions Arts & Entertainment Centre - Upper Hutt, Wellington - SEA OF LOVE – SONGS OF THE 60S & 70S: abunDANCE!
- reviewed by Yolande Brophy

So with the one lowlight noted back to the happy place. Sea of Love is truly a celebration of womanhood in all its glory, grace, humour, beauty and pure pleasure. It is completely absorbing. By selecting love songs of the 60s and 70s not only are we treated to some of the most beautiful female voices of all time, we also feast visually on the colour and forms of the era. Somehow these images awaken hope and combined with music and performance all things are possible again. Winter is leaving and spring is just around the corner. This production rapturously provides the gateway to the seasonal change and is conveyed impeccably by the maturity and vibrant enjoyment of the dancers.

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Paramount, Wellington - DO YOU STILL THINK OF ME: Oddball and melancholic lyricism and cerebral calisthenics.
- reviewed by Sam Trubridge

This duo of choreographer/dancers have been making work in Wellington and Auckland for many years now. Both have pieces in the Footnote Forte season this Spring. However, it is in independent works like this that these choreographers are able to indulge their style and interests fully, with works like Dabrowska’s Carnival Hound (2009) and Larsen’s So You Think You Can Idolise My X-Factor (2012): a comedy work with Josh Rutter. In many ways this new work is a meeting of those two works and those two styles: Dabrowska’s oddball and melancholic lyricism with Larsen’s cerebral calisthenics.

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Gryphon, Wellington - THE PROSPECT: Powerful depiction of town under siege
- reviewed by Laurie Atkinson

There’s an appealing rawness in the writing and structure of this first play by Maraea Rakuraku. And while her characters are stereotypes as well as symbols of good and evil, one is always held by the possibility that they might do the unexpected such is the power of the dramatic tension that she is able to create in the key scenes of her whanau drama set in the small Bay of Plenty town of Te Manawanui; pop: 522 and “40 minutes away from civilization”.

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Meteor Theatre, Hamilton - DRACULA: How madness and evil become the norm
- reviewed by Gail Pittaway

Bram Stoker’s great story, like his character, never seems to die and has survived through many genres and media since its publication in the 1890s.

This stage version by William McNulty simplifies the cast and plot of the original story but retains much of the language and atmosphere as Dr Seward and his old friend Abram Van Helsing unravel the mystery of the illnesses and disappearances that have plagued Seward’s small circle of friends in England.

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BATS, Wellington - HOLDING ON: Full of angst but leads nowhere
- reviewed by Ewen Coleman

The ability to continue “holding on” after the loss of a loved one or experiencing a traumatic event like seeing someone die is the premise behind Gavin McGibbon’s new play Holding On currently playing at BATS Theatre.

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Q Loft, 305 Queen St, Auckland - DROWNING IN VERONICA LAKE: The Fame Monster
- reviewed by James Wenley

There’s commentary within this show about the difference between celebrity and stardom. Celebrity is flash in the pan stuff. Stardom is enduring. You counted. People remember. Movie femme fatale Veronica Lake has the ingredients for stardom – a troubled back-story, ambition, a face that lights up the screens. She was very much a screen celebrity of the 1940s. But a star?

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Gryphon, Wellington - THE PROSPECT: A rich and insightful theatrical experience
- reviewed by John Smythe

Maraea Rakuraku’s powerful first play, The Prospect, is a stunning debut. What’s more it is the first venture into theatre directing for Tammy Davis (Forum North trained, with impressive credits in film and television). Tawata producer Hone Kouka has gathered a strong cast and creative support team to ensure the heart of the work pulsates to infuse and enthuse their audience with its uncompromising drama and humour.

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

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