The latest Theatreview Weekly includes a review of Always My Sister, I Could Live Here, The Kiri Project – Performance/Installation, and As We Enter.

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

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The latest Theatreview Weekly includes a review of Always My Sister, I Could Live Here, The Kiri Project – Performance/Installation, and As We Enter.

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

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AS WE ENTER: Loose storyline and confessional monologues lack irony

BATS Theatre (Out Of Site), Cnr Cuba & Dixon, Wellington
- reviewed by Hannah August

As We Enter purports to be a “work that explores why the concept of the ‘OE’ is so ingrained in our culture”. This is a genuinely interesting question. New Zealand is becoming more cosmopolitan; virtual access to other cultures and other locations is increasingly enabled via the Internet; the currencies of many of the countries traditionally chosen by New Zealanders as destinations for working holidays are sufficiently weakened since 2008 that it makes far more financial sense to stay at home.

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ONCE ON CHUNUK BAIR: Once was Enough
Maidment, Auckland
- reviewed by Matt Baker

The fact that the temporary capture of Chunuk Bair was the only success for the Allies in the Gallipoli Campaign at the expense of hundreds of men’s lives is a perfect example of the futility of war. It is a landmark in New Zealand history and requires little reminding: lest we forget, indeed. The opportunity, then, to see life breathed into the men who fought and died is an exciting, if not, macabre, prospect, and one that could result in a truly cathartic experience for Kiwi audiences.

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ANNIE: We got Annie!
Civic Theatre, Auckland
- reviewed by James Wenley

Did the Global Financial Crisis lead to an increase in Annie revivals? Set in 1933, four years after the stock market crash, the tale of the 11-year-old red-headed orphan has as its backdrop the haves and have-nots of the Great Depression era. Six years after the 2008 crisis, the Broadway Musical is now playing at Auckland’s Civic Theatre.

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ONCE ON CHUNUK BAIR: NZ’s battle tragedy comes alive
Maidment, Auckland
- reviewed by Janet McAllister

It's not often live drama includes more than a handful of actors - even rarer to see a whole cast on stage for long.

But in this superb Auckland Theatre Company production, twelve angry men fill the stage with presence and charisma, increasing the under-fire excitement of a battlefield tragedy.

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ANNIE: Kiwi kids and dog add to Annie magic
Civic Theatre, Auckland

- reviewed by Paul Simei-Barton

In an age of diminished expectations Annie offers an unabashed celebration of the irrepressible optimism that fuels the American Dream.

However unattainable that dream has become, its guiding principle, that getting rich is a good idea, makes perfect sense when voiced by an 11-year-old orphan determined to escape from a life of grinding poverty.

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THE KIRI PROJECT - PERFORMANCE/INSTALLATION: Beautifully focussed, poignant, resonant peformance
Pataka Museum, Porirua
- reviewed by Jennifer Shennan

Moving graphics project onto the back wall and create a circle on the floor to mark the performance arena. Potiki Bryant is lying barely identifiable in the dappled light and mottled leaf patterns of the bush floor. She moves but very slowly. It is the earth, the clay, taking on its own life. After the elemental forces have shaped and separated out, and the clay has reached the vertical, Corneal (who has been seated on a chair in the shadows outside of the circle) enters the space with her bucket of wet and ready clay. She proceeds to plaster it all over the dancer, face included (nostrils too… keep breathing, Louise…) preparing and revealing and sealing the shape and existence of a woman.

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ONCE ON CHUNUK BAIR: Notions of glamour extinguished while those who gave their lives pointlessly are ennobled
Maidment, Auckland
- reviewed by Robbie Nicol

Once on Chunuk Bair comes to the Maidment Theatre twenty-five years after its last professional production. Co-directed by Cameron Rhodes and Ian Mune, the director of the show’s debut season in 1982, the Auckland Theatre Company has powerfully realised a story that has come to embody the New Zealand view of our English ‘brothers in arms'.

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ANNIE: A timely escape from today’s realities
Civic Theatre, Auckland
- reviewed by Kate Ward-Smythe

Optimism bounds onto the Civic’s stage in the form of Annie: the character, the young actress and this production, are equal in joyfulness. While this is a safe rendition of the tale, told very much with the kids in mind, it is good old-fashioned, warm and wholesome fun.

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MARX IN SOHO – A PLAY ON HISTORY: Truly relevant
Newtown Community & Cultural Centre, Wellington
- reviewed by Grace Hoet

Zinn blends history, personal impression and political vivacity into an eloquently assembled and captivating monologue. His Marx invites the audience to reconsider socialist theory as a compelling perspective for this day and age. “I’m not a Marxist! I’ve come to clear my name...”

Confessions and recollections from the aged Marx give great insight into the private life and love of this family man, performed by Anya Tate-Manning.

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THE SILENT TREATMENT: High calibre performers
The Film Archive, Wellington
- reviewed by James McKinnon

For the maiden voyage of this experiment, the film is a Hopalong Cassidy Western, one of over 60 produced between 1935 and 1948. Although it is billed as Six Shooter Justice, my research suggests that was a 1917 film and the Hopalong Cassidy filmography lists no such title so, amazingly, I am not sure which film I saw last night. However, I suspect it was much improved by the introduction of a nefarious plot involving fair trade coffee and a cure for the common stroke.

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ASIAN INVASION PLAYS FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF AOTEAROA: Helping to grow more tolerance, kindness, and understanding
Q Theatre, The Vault, Auckland

- reviewed by Cherie Moore

The show is comprised of ten scenes with multiple characters, book ended by a song about having foreign blood but having lived in New Zealand your whole life. The actors create all aspects of the scenes including sound effects, music and soundscapes.

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PROMISE AND PROMISCUITY: A NEW MUSICAL BY JANE AUSTEN: Smooth flow of subtle innuendo, contemporary references and Austen's own words plus music
The Mussel Inn, Onekaka (near Takaka), Nelson
- reviewed by Antony Hodgson

I must admit to being unsure as to what I was about to see; whether it would be a bawdy show passing a glancing blow to the writings of our beloved Jane or some kind of Austen mimicry for the sake of laughs. To my delight Penny Ashton produces for us a well-rounded show with a plethora of well-defined characters from snobbish young ladies, through apoplectic mothers to piggish 2nd cousins with an outrageous penchant for infelicitous compliments.

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ALWAYS MY SISTER: Some things never change
The Basement Studio, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland

- reviewed by Janet McAllister

These sketched-out scenes of a real-life tragedy relate the raw harshness of 1840s Auckland settler life: dirt floors, public hangings and passers-by humiliating those locked in the stocks at the bottom of Queen St.

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ALWAYS MY SISTER: Compelling and haunting
The Basement Studio, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland
- reviewed by Candice Lewis

Stepping back in time to the 1840s Auckland, we meet Irish sisters Sophia (Torum Heng) and Maggie (Jess Sayer). Maggie is not about to pay attention to her sensible sister; she is swept up in a palpable wave of lust upon meeting Joe Burns (Chris Tempest), a ‘good looking’ man quick to tempt her with his hip flask and pleasures of the flesh. Michelanne Forster’s take on these women makes sense to me – perhaps to anyone watching someone they love walk smiling into Hell.

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ALWAYS MY SISTER: Sometimes, not always
The Basement Studio, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland
- reviewed by Matt Baker

Michelanne Forster has a penchant for dramatising historical New Zealand murders, from the highly acclaimed Daughters of Heaven, based on the infamous Parker/Hulme murder, to the shooting of John Saunders by Senga Whittingham in My Heart is Bathed in Blood. In her programme notes for Always My Sister, Forster writes that “What interested [her] about the story were the silent women behind the grisly drama…” While this interpretation certainly provides more dramatic fodder than following the sociopathic drunk Joseph Burns, the duration of the play and the pace at which it is performed results in the dramatisation of these women remaining rather under-dramatic.

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I COULD LIVE HERE: Clever and feel good
The Dark Room at Te Manawa, Palmerston North
- reviewed by John Ross

So, what’s it like, being a trio of young, keen-as, just-out-of-Toi-Whakaari actors, traipsing up and down EnZed to perform a programme of drama-extracts in provincial high schools? Ria Simmonds, Carrie Green and Andrew Patterson, who recently did just that under the aegis of EnsembleImpact, set out to offer a lively encapsulation of how it was, how it felt, re-enacting themselves (in mildly self-caricatured versions), in a programme of vignettes interspersed with singing and dancing, sometimes parodic.

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

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