A selection of reviews from Theatreview from the last week including: Beauty and the Beast, Midnight in Moscow, The Little Sweep, and Dancing Till We Drop.

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

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A selection of reviews from Theatreview from the last week including: Beauty and the Beast, Midnight in Moscow, The Little Sweep, and Dancing Till We Drop.

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

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Lower NZI, Level 1, Aotea Centre, Auckland - MIDNIGHT IN MOSCOW: Reds in your Head
- reviewed by James Wenley

Since his stage debut in 1974, New Zealand playwright Dean Parker, who last year was awarded the inaugural Playmarket award for making a a significant artistic contribution to theatre in New Zealand, has been a consistent voice from the left worldview. His last work staged in Auckland was The Hollow Men in 2008, the farcical doco-theatre adaption of Nicky Hagar’s political study into the Brash years of the National Party.

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The Factory Theatre, 7 Eden Street, Newmarket, Auckland - THE LITTLE SWEEP: Delightful transportation
- reviewed by Patrick Kelly

Opera Factory’s ‘Opera Rocks’ youth programme marks the 100th anniversary of Benjamin Britten’s birth with a delightful performance of his children’s opera The Little Sweep, preceded by Eric Crozier’s play Let’s make an Opera.

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Court Theatre, Bernard Street, Addington, Christchurch - BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: Fresh delights from old tales
- reviewed by Lindsay Clark

From writing to playing and lighting to costume, the production is one to gladden the what-to-do -today blight that sometimes befalls school holidays. Add to all that some spot-on music from the able Luke Di Somma and The Court has a quality production on offer.

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BATS - Out Of Site - Cnr Cuba & Dixon, Wellington - DANCING TILL WE DROP: Substantial if ephemeral fare clearly explored and expressed
- reviewed by John Smythe

Angie Farrow is a unique voice in contemporary New Zealand play writing and bringing together six of her very short plays in an 85 minute programme allows that voice to take the stage on its own terms, under the remarkably cohesive and coherent direction of Jaime Dorner and John Downie.

While none of the six are naturalistic, all capture truths of subjective human experience.

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4 Moncrieff St., Mt. Victoria, Wellington - THE GREAT PIRATICAL RUMBUSTIFICATION: A play to inspire play
- reviewed by John Smythe

Director Lucy Edwards keeps the story ticking over and ensures her cast connect well with their audience – thanks to the unforced and naturally evolving involvement the script engenders from the moment Clinker and Tom each ask the children if they have seen the other.

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Luggate Memorial Hall, Wanaka - ON THE UPSIDE-DOWN OF THE WORLD: Poignant, illuminating, tragic and brilliant
- reviewed by Pip Harker

This wonderful one-woman play follows the adventures of Lady Ann Martin, the young wife of the first chief justice to New Zealand, who arrived here in 1841 and settled in Parnell.

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Memorial Hall, Cromwell - BEAUTIFUL LOSERS: Captivated Beats
- reviewed by Laura Williamson

Mike Husdon's script is full of fresh moments, the dialogue standing up to the snippets of Kerouac's writing recited on stage. “You can dance to this stuff!” Cassady says, evoking exactly the giddy tempo of Kerouc's phrasing.

But what stands out most is the acting.

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The Pumphouse, Takapuna, Auckland - THE DRAGON OF AN ORDINARY FAMILY: Magically marvellous adaptation
- reviewed by Joanna Page

Under Tim Bray’s direction, Todd Emerson, Elizabeth Tierney and Aaron Ward bring the Belsaki family to life. It’s left to Sam Berkley and Aruna Po-Ching to transform themselves into all the other characters in the story, which they do effortlessly and with subtle, quick costume changes.

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UCOL Performing Arts Studio, Queen Street, Palmerston North - DANCING TILL WE DROP: Absorbing, thought-provoking, often compelling, always adventurous
- reviewed by Richard Mays

If playwright Angie Farrow was a recording artist, Dancing Till We Drop would be a live compilation CD.

Six of the writer’s short plays are packaged together in this hour-and-a-half long production directed by John Downie, retired senior lecturer in theatre and film from Victoria University, and his protege, UCOL performing arts programme leader, Jaime Dorner.

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Globe Theatre, Dunedin - BRIEF ENCOUNTER: emotional understanding born of his own experience of forbidden love
- reviewed by Terry MacTavish

No wonder that when he turned his golden pen from the light-hearted froth that charmed the British nation, especially during the dark war years, Coward was able to write so poignantly of the agony of loving the wrong person. The Globe has picked the perfect time, as New Zealand celebrates with rainbows the historic passing of the Marriage Equality Act, to remember all who have felt degraded for following their hearts.

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The Basement, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland - GOODBYE MY FELENI: Potentially groundbreaking play
- reviewed by Tamati Patuwai

Set in 1942, Goodbye My Feleni presents four characters, all of Pacific island lineage who have joined the ranks of the D (Ngati Walkabout) Company of the Maori Battalion. They are preparing for their deployment with training, booze and the typical posturing that comes naturally with Pacific relationships.

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ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre, Auckland - MADAME BUTTERFLY: Sublime
- reviewed by Penny Dodd

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.

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ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre, Auckland - MADAME BUTTERFLY: Breathtakingly beautiful
- reviewed by Simon Wilson

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 ...

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Lake Wanaka Centre, Wanaka - BLACK GRACE: VAKA: Explosive rhythm and energy
- reviewed by Sue Wards

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.

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Lower NZI, Level 1, Aotea Centre, Auckland - MIDNIGHT IN MOSCOW: Resoundingly good
- reviewed by Gilbert Wong

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.

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The Basement, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland - GOODBYE MY FELENI: Thought-provoking prelude to Anzac Day
- reviewed by Frances Morton

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.

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Lower NZI, Level 1, Aotea Centre, Auckland - MIDNIGHT IN MOSCOW: Thought-provoking intrigue with laughter and song played with aplomb
- reviewed by Heidi North-Bailey

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.

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Lower NZI, Level 1, Aotea Centre, Auckland - MIDNIGHT IN MOSCOW: From Russia with Kiwi wit, sophistication, intelligence and erudition
- reviewed by Paul Simei-Barton

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.

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

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