The latest Theatreview Weekly includes reviews of Double Derelicts, Long Ago, Long Ago, and Antony and Cleopatra.

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

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The latest Theatreview Weekly includes reviews of Double Derelicts, Long Ago, Long Ago, and Antony and Cleopatra.

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

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LONG AGO, LONG AGO: A true human experience of fantasy and reality made real through subtle artistry
BATS Theatre, 1 Kent Tce, Wellington
- reviewed by John Smythe

With Long Ago, Long Ago – her fourth and most intricate play – Cassandra Tse has come of age as a playwright. And she’s only 22! The title translates the standard opening for Japanese folk tales, which usually close with words meaning “blissful, blissful”. In the 80-odd minutes between we are, among other things, alerted to the question, “What’s the difference between a story and just… something that happened?”

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LONG AGO, LONG AGO: Lyrical, poetic, hard-hitting and emotional
BATS Theatre, 1 Kent Tce, Wellington
- reviewed by Ewen Coleman

The common notion of a fairytale is that it has a happy ending. But this is not always the case, as one of the sisters in Cassandra Tse's award-winning play Long Ago, Long Ago, discovers. Audrey (Isobel MacKinnon) has moved in with her sister Ella (Susie Berry) while trying to complete her postgraduate studies on analysing and categorising fairytales.

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EIGHT GIGABYTES OF HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY: Go hardcore or go home
Q Theatre Loft, 305 Queen St, Auckland
- reviewed by James Wenley

Weird stuff. He wants an affair, she wants someone to cuddle her. They both yearn for connection. That’s not weird. Eight Gigabytes is an honest and up-to-date take on a uniquely 21st century response to desperate loneliness and an aching lack of fulfilment.

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EIGHT GIGABYTES OF HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY: Download Incomplete – Error Occurred
Q Theatre Loft, 305 Queen St, Auckland
- reviewed by Matt Baker

There is a fine line between playwrights providing what is necessary outside of dialogue for practitioners to convey the meaning of their story, and prescribing the text because they cannot see it any other way.

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EIGHT GIGABYTES OF HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY: Addictions stripped bare
Q Theatre Loft, 305 Queen St, Auckland
- reviewed by Paul Simei-Barton

Despite the provocative title the show does not feature any pornographic material but offers a raw, funny and often poignant vision of two lives unravelling under the self-destructive logic of compulsive addictions.

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EIGHT GIGABYTES OF HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY: Large, harsh, focused reflection of reality’s soul
Q Theatre Loft, 305 Queen St, Auckland
- reviewed by Jan Maree

What starts as a rollick for one and all, with guffaws flowing thick and fast as if we are watching slapstick, soon progresses into pained and sporadic laughs, jerking from us, for a reason I know all too well.

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BALLET REVOLUCION: Technique and talent outshine limitations
Civic Theatre, Auckland
- reviewed by Bernadette Rae

Beautiful beyond belief, an exotic Caribbean flock, the dancers are spectacularly talented and drawn from a nation "born to dance". Each has passed through a Russian-style selection system to enter Havana's prestigious Escuela Nacional de Arte for extensive training in either classical ballet or modern and folkloric dance.

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MIDSUMMER (A PLAY WITH SONGS): Midsummer a wonderland
Centrepoint, Palmerston North
- reviewed by Richard Mays

Winsome, witty, wacky, warm and wise: few plays manage to capture these qualities so completely.

As the southern hemisphere's shortest day looms, Centrepoint Theatre embraces it with a romp set during the opposing solstice ... Wonderful.

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ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA: A sensual feast for eyes, ears and heart
Unitec Theatre, Entry 1, Carrington Rd, Mt Albert, Auckland
- reviewed by Lexie Matheson

It’s a massive narrative and director Vanessa Byrnes has used all of her considerable expertise and talent, both intellectual and practical, to condense the story down to ninety minutes without removing anything of note. She’s done some incredibly smart things with the text ...

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AN EVENING WITH THE MODERN MAORI QUARTET: Easy listening with sheer quality
Hannah Playhouse, Wellington
- reviewed by John Smythe

Sure their get-up is flash but Maaka Pohatu, Francis Kora, Matariki Whatarau and James Tito are so engagingly laid back, the sheer quality of their harmonized singing exceeds initial expectations. From their ‘Haere Mai’ medley right through to ‘Haere Ra’ they hold their increasingly relaxed and enthusiastic audience in the collective palms of their hands.

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DOUBLE DERELICTS: Tomfoolery plus
Hannah Playhouse, Wellington
- reviewed by John Smythe

The quest for territory and possessions is endemic to our species. The question is whether we fight over them or find a way to share and this supplies the thematic underpinning to their increasingly acrobatic clowning as Dera and Dero bounce, twirl and flip themselves and each other above, around and behind the coveted couch in pursuit of the boot.

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WOYZECK AND PAINS OF YOUTH: Dynamically dramatic
Te Whaea National Dance and Drama Centre, 11 Hutchison Rd, Newtown, Wellington
- reviewed by John Smythe

Third Year productions from Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School always have a special quality thanks to their long-term company nature. Of course that value is always offset by the difficulty in finding plays that give all the graduand actors a good and appropriate role, let alone plays that are relevant and resonant when they are programmed.

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BALLET REVOLUCION: A Ballet Revolucion Indeed
Civic Theatre, Auckland
- reviewed by Sarah Knox

These dancers are at the top of their game and for two hours they move their beautiful articulate bodies, from contained precision to flying abandon. Their partnering skills are fearless and flawless, flexibility awe-inspiring, and they have energy like energizer batteries.

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I’LL BE FINE: Young in Trouble
The Basement, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland
- reviewed by Matt Baker

B4 25 Playmarket Award nominee Ben Wilson has been inspired by seeing "young people's stories told honestly," and while I don't buy the authenticity of the issues addressed in his play, "I'll Be Fine", the pre quarter-life crisis generation is a terrifying truth to which I've been exposed.

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THE TAMING OF THE SHREW: Well liked
Unitec Theatre, Entry 1, Carrington Rd, Mt Albert, Auckland
- reviewed by Lexie Matheson

A new Shakespeare production is always worthy of note and when directors of skill and experience engage with exuberant and stylish student actors the result is often Shakespeare viewed through a new lens, and with a contemporaneous flip that is both exhilarating and incisive.

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SALUTE - REMEMBERING WORLD WAR: Dancers give everything they have
ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre, Auckland
- reviewed by Raewyn Whyte

There are moments of calm and quiet in the score to counter the sounds of battle, the urgent pace of action. A solo trumpet plays a quiet pastoral song which ends on a jarring series of notes as the barrage of battle returns, relentless shooting close at hand and big guns booming away in the distance, and the rolling thunder that drops over the dancers like a curtain as they go over the top. Behind the action, chilling projections from the Red Earth series by Geoff Tune across a large screen morph slowly as the viewpoint changes from being at eye level with bloodied ground scattered with skulls, to the far horizon, looking across the bloodied battlefield to the silhouetted remnants of trees and villages and a ruined city in the distance.

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

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