Shows

Live Through This is a double bill of two solo shows: The Best Show in Town is at Your Place Every Night, written and performed by Jonny Potts, and Change Your Own Life, written and performed by Jean Sergent. The two tragicomedies address love, life, and loss in very different ways.

In The Best Show in Town is at Your Place Every Night, Potts takes the audience on a tour of Wellington’s video shops, from the big players like Amalgamated and United Video to cult icons such as (the still-standing) AroVideo. By ‘takes us on a tour’, I don’t mean Potts waxes lyrical, although he does plenty of that. It is as if we’re on a bus, riding through the suburbs with a suited-up guide whose passion borders on delirium at times. Potts’ references are incendiary, kindled by genius, elusive, alluding always to something lurking beneath. A lover, a mistake, a death.

Lucas Neal’s clever, prop-heavy set here doubles as the video stores of yore and a person’s house (where the best show in town is on every night, of course). Brynne Tasker-Poland’s lighting helps establish drama, setting, and pace – especially when our bus chugs up the one-way hills of our damp city.

Change Your Own Life is Sergent’s true story of losing her best friend and brother nine months apart. As she responds to this insurmountable grief and we learn more about her life, tarot cards are slowly revealed on the back wall. It feels part-confessional, part-seminar, and part-magic, especially thanks to interludes lit in vivid purple and green by Tasker-Poland. Rapid shifts in Sergent’s performance – from gentle to explosive – at first throw me off guard. I come to realise these dramatic contrasts and conflicts must echo her experience. Grief is not linear, pretty, sitting in a shoebox. It’s loud and messy. The lid is open and we cling to those precious shoes, our breath stolen by the unfairness of it all. Thanks to Sergent for this brave, bold, and beautiful work.

As a 90-minute one-act play, this rarely performed work by American great Tennessee Williams is unusual. His work is always intense and lyrical and this piece is especially so. Its language is visceral and violent and yet devastatingly beautiful.

Society doyenne Violet has invited to her home a young doctor hoping to benefit from her philanthropy to discuss performing a lobotomy on Catherine, Violet’s young niece. Catherine was the only witness to the death of Violet’s son Sebastian and shutting her away in a mental hospital run by nuns hasn’t been enough to stop her babbling about what happened suddenly last summer in Spain when he met his end.

It’s tempting to resort to histrionics when performing Williams, but the excellent cast, under the careful direction of Emily K. Brown, exercise restraint in their performances which are all the more powerful because of it. As Catherine, Margot van de Water is astounding. We are left in no doubt as to the trauma caused by what she has witnessed and when she reveals the gruesome truth about Sebastian’s death, it is truly shocking.

Stephanie Gartrell clearly enjoys inhabiting the daiquiri-swilling shrew that is Violet and as the earnest Dr Cukrowicz, Slaine McKenzie excels. Helen Mackenzie and Finn Nacey provide energetic and petulant support as grasping relatives. Simran Rughani and Maria Buchanan make the most of their smaller roles as housemaid and nun.

The simple garden set with its lush pot plants and creeping ivy provides an appropriately sub-tropical background to the narrative. Whoever painted the floor deserves a special mention for their beautifully rendered flagstones.

The lighting (Riley Gibson) is exceptionally well designed and responsive to the action on stage and the wardrobe (Mandy Watkins and Cara Ngajar) is lush and period appropriate.

Everything about this production is polished and professional, which is even more impressive when you consider that the country went into COVID lockdown a week from its original opening in August. Full marks, Wellington Repertory Theatre.

When performer Jeremy Hunt announced that Ted Talks Crimes is a work in progress, my jaw dropped open. I’ve never seen a more developed development season! On as part of the TAHI Festival of Solo Performance, this brilliant one-man show needs little improvement, but because Hunt asked, and seeing as I’m in the business of feedback…

Ted (Hunt) is a New York crim who collects money on behalf of his mafia boss, The Don. Ted’s chosen debt-extraction method is the talk of the town. He’s a formidable tickler. After tickling the life out of one too many down-and-out marks, he begins to re-evaluate his life decisions. What kind of legacy will he leave behind? Is tickling for money a good use of his time? And why is his cut so small… Wait, I mean, is he a good man?

So begins this mile-a-minute tale of soul-searching, vengeance, and deadly bananas.

Utilising different accents to great effect (occasionally slipping out of Ted’s Italian Brooklyn lilt but mostly keeping it up), Hunt embodies multiple characters with ease, flair, and commanding physicality. His sense of comic timing perfectly serves the script (Hunt and Ricky Dey), especially when it comes to the deliciously obscure anecdotes and references woven throughout. Ted Talks Crimes is rife with my favourite kind of absurdism, where the unusual and usual squelch into a potion of crab jelly that occasionally smacks you in the face, killing you instantly, but mostly smiles down at you from its innocuous jar on the shelf. I swear this reference is relevant.

Bekky Boyce’s lighting design effortlessly distinguishes the setting as we hop between a market, an office, a bar, and more. There’s just the right amount of set furnishings and props – many of which rouse a wicked laugh – but I’d love to see a louder and more dramatic sound design (director Ben Ashby) that hypes up the drama and plays into the emotional moments, like when Ted’s life is changed by a kindly gorilla.

The theme of this uplifting TAHI Festival production is exactly what you’d expect from the title – family. More precisely, “lifting the lid on the complexity of family relationships from disastrous to delicious”.

This aim is achieved through four actors (Emma Katene, Daniel Gagau, Ngahiriwa Rauhina, and Melissa Sutherland) performing 13 short extracts from 11 solo works by New Zealand writers. With the help of assorted chairs, a few bits of wardrobe, and a couple of props, they deliver warm, empathetic, poignant, and often laugh-out-loud vignettes of what it means to have whānau.

The playwrights whose work is showcased here are Vela Manusaute, Felix Desmarais, Rob Mokaraka, Jamie McCaskill, Toa Fraser, John Broughton, Emily Duncan, Tom Scott, Melissa Sutherland (doing admirable double duty as playwright and actor), and Nicola Pauling. Each has their own rich way of shining light on the trials of being human through the lens of family.

The lovingly created characters we meet over the hour of the production range from a miracle baby produced from the remaining half of a fallopian tube after several ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages, to an 11-year-old girl with a superhero Samoan mum, a literal and metaphorical Karen and her daughter, a young man revelling in his half-Māori/half-Pākehā ancestry, a family with projectile-vomiting children heading to the beach, and an angry mum whose kids have been removed by CYFS.

Co-directors Kerryn Palmer and Sally Richards have chosen their extracts carefully and well. In addition to being woven together by theme, the pieces flow seamlessly from one to the next with appropriate music, well-applied projection onto the back wall of the theatre, sensitive lighting, and some cool dance moves from the actors who occasionally interact.

The mark of a successful theatre production is that you’re left wanting more. I could have happily watched this group of talented actors telling their uniquely Kiwi stories with genuine pathos and humour well into the night.

Clearly drawing heavily on cult sci-fi TV shows like Star Trek and Babylon 5, Peregrine V starts with a smart projected introduction to the improvised tale of a rag-tag spaceship crew that we are about to see created.

The all-knowing computer then randomly assigns six actors (Gabrielle Raz-Liebman, Jerome Cousins, Malcolm Morrison, Brendon Bennetts, Emma Maguire, and Liz Butler) their characters. They are of varying species with an expected collection of roles on the ship ranging from the shapeshifting captain and human engineer to the mutant therapist and AI entertainer. Also along for the ride are an avian diplomat and an amphibian mercenary. The actors gamefully embrace these characters, give them names, and set the audience and themselves off on a journey of discovery.

An added element of character is the beautifully animated talking computer (operated by director Jonathan Briden) that always sits on the wall behind the actors and offers droll commentary, jokes, and interaction with the characters, even condemning one of them to death with a coldness reminiscent of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The story that unfolds is more existential than the typical storylines of the TV series this show pays homage to. Some characters are not who they appear to be, causing significant angst among the crew, much of which neatly unfolds in the therapist’s office. My favourite line of the night is “I smell emotions!” yelled by the therapist just before he bounds on stage to analyse another tortured crewmate.

Costuming plays a significant part and each actor selects an appropriate outfit, which some alter to good effect during the course of the narrative to reflect their story arcs. Sound effects (Briden again) and lighting (Bethany Miller) are also used well to give context to what the actors are doing and mark the end of short scenes.

All involved with this NZ Improv Festival show obviously enjoy the sci-fi genre and its tropes and create an irrepressibly fun hour of nerdy entertainment.

All power to BATS for pushing ahead with the NZ Improv Festival under COVID Alert Level 2 and making it work. Suitably spooky music from the keyboard of Matt Carroll greeted the masked-up audience as they entered the Random Stage and found their physically distanced seats for this one-off supernatural story.

Those familiar with The X-Files would have immediately recognised the premise of this show with intrepid Agents Smoulder and Gully of the Federal Bureau of Improvisation investigating the unusual disappearance of an unnamed woman who has been drawn into a desert canyon near Cactustown, Arizona by mysterious voices from the past.

Even though some of them are too young to have seen the original TV show, the ensemble cast of Aaron Douglas, Christine Brooks, Ben Jardine, Liz Butler, Trubie Dylan-Smith, Laura Irish, and Daniel Allan cleverly weave a tale worthy of the X-Files scriptwriters using the scant offering of a generic outdoor location from an audience member.

Utilising their enviable physical theatre and characterisation skills, we’re soon introduced to hapless white-trash couple Clarice and Chuck and their parents, the local sheriff and his wannabe deputy Cletis, an 86-year-old librarian, and The Town Psychic. Collectively, they help the agents solve the mystery of the Lost Girls who disappeared on a Hanging Rock-style picnic in 1903 and have now somehow been transformed into a drooling monster from an unearthly, triangle-based realm, accessed through Cactus No. 3, that just wants a family. They even manage to exploit the underlying sexual tension between Mulder and Scully that so titillated X-Files audiences in the 1990s.

The cast are supported by appropriate lighting changes and blackouts that occasionally cut them off or leave them hanging to hilarious effect and Carroll’s background music that neatly highlights the tense finale. Some basic costuming and four red blocks provide just enough setting.

The great joy of improv is that you never see the same show twice and as a one-off festival performance, The I-Files delivered in spades.

Whether you’re a seasoned veteran of the Dungeons & Dragons lore or a newbie looking to find your way in the mystical realms of world building, the Dungeons & Comedians troupe, all the way from Christchurch, is possibly one of the funnest ways to approach the famous fantasy role-playing game. Taking a game already inherently rooted in improv and interactive storymaking, Dungeons & Improvisers brings another layer of fantastical performance and personality to Dungeons & Dragons… and improv!

In this NZ Improv Fest show, DM (Dungeon Master Brendon Bennetts) guides three characters chosen at random through a world of fantasy and adventure, comedic mishaps, and (un)lucky dice rolls. As the DM creates a scene, they employ the help of their ‘imps’: six cast members who contort and transform their bodies to form both inanimate objects and living characters for the three protagonists to interact with on their journey. The audience too is called upon to create obstacles, perils, and plot points, bringing the show to life. Tonight, an old wizard in a red coat named Nimbus the Blue (Wiremu Tuhiwai), a sparky rogue called Bella Doone (Amelia Cartwright), and a comical fighter introduced as Gregnog (Tara Swadi) find themselves facing the amphibious frog prince, usurper of the town of Spawn.

The characters are accompanied by Matt Carroll on the keyboard, who expertly and seamlessly provides atmosphere, anticipation, and aesthetic to every scene. Meanwhile Zoe Higgins masterfully lights the show with a myriad of hues and shades depending on the scenario... or flashes of red for dangerous combat scenes! Both the lighting and the tailored soundscape add a sense of heightened reality to the already very real world unfolding on stage.

Perhaps the best part of the show is the pure, unadulterated imagination on display. Already improvisational in nature, the performance qualities of Dungeons & Dragons truly lend themselves seamlessly to an improv stage show. It’s easy to see why Dungeons & Comedians have sold out shows for the last four years!

Walking into BATS Theatre for my first NZ Improv Festival outing, I’m thrilled to be greeted by a staff member with a bright orange sticker. I’m told I can wear it if I want to participate in the show, which I think is a brilliant innovation. Some people are put off improv simply because they don’t want to be singled out. As a Leo, I of course take the sticker and stick it straight on my forehead.

Agatha Christine (Christine Brooks) welcomes us to the Random Stage and sets the scene for Murder on a Boat, where a cast of 10+ scramble to solve the whodunnit aboard the SS Maria Williams. As this is improv, who plays who and who murders who is decided in real-time over one hour of spontaneity and rapid-fire thinking.

Although there are instances of players talking over each other and misinterpreting offers, I thoroughly enjoy Murder on a Boat from start to end. Tightening it up a tad would simply help the great premise and enthusiast cast shine even brighter.

Standout members include Matt Powell, whose detective Sebastian Le Crabbe perhaps isn’t as ready to hand over the reins as he first thought; Marea Colombo, whose charisma as the overworked Beverly nearly steals the show; and Tara Swadi, whose Duchess Fox is killed off far too early. This doesn’t count as a spoiler because it’ll be a different murder victim next time!

Moments of brilliance have me cackling into my mask. One such is a passionate encounter between star-crossed lovers Beverly and the Captain (Daniel Allan), whose impromptu shanty To Sea, ably accompanied by Matt Hutton on keys, is another favourite scene of mine. When there’s a danger of boring ol’ misogyny creeping in, Laura Irish flips the narrative as the ship’s singer Maxine.

As Murder on a Boat comes to a close, I look at my friend and declare it to be “really, really, really good”. I’d love to see it again.

New Zealand’s loudest mime takes the stage at Circa Theatre to deliver school holiday fun for kids aged four to 94. This short, snappy, silly show starts with Fergus Aitken’s beloved Mr Fungus enjoying a coffee at home before a radio ad reminds him he’s got to get to Circa… we, the audience, are waiting!

The first half of Mr Fungus sees him riding the bus and battling the elements to make it to the theatre on time and the second is the show itself, where Mr Fungus bursts through the curtain of a light-up box that serves as a stage on the stage (meta set design by Aitken himself).

This structure is easy to follow for the kids. Even with very little dialogue they seem to keep their place and increasingly become more engaged, yelling suggestions like “check your suitcase!” or “the other banana!” or “I don’t know who that cat is!” or “Poppa, that’s where Cinderella was born!” Kids say the darndest things.

Though this isn’t an interactive or improv show so to speak, Mr Fungus responds beautifully to the littlies, giving them their moment in the sun while teasing them just a tad before driving the action forward. It’s clear how much the children love the show, especially when it comes to the addition of colourful props like the flying, farting balloons that make up the spectacular finale.

As a grownup (legally speaking), I’d love to see Aitken ham it up a bit more when things go wrong. For instance, when a juggling ball or a banana is dropped, a slapstick slip gag would satisfy that diabolical desire for disaster that kids have but that I don’t because adults are much more sophisticated than that…

What strikes me the most is Aitken’s gift for physical comedy. The way he embodies multiple characters with a simple gesture or makes his body appear weightless while fighting Wellington’s driving horizontal rain and gale-force winds (highly effective sound design by Aitken and director Fraser Hooper) is simply astonishing. Bravo!

The cleverly named Maximum Benefit is Max Porozny and Ben Jardine, who specialise in long-form improv. Taking a few suggestions from one audience member – in this case, accidentally, me – the duo perform an entirely made-up story from start to finish over one hour of laughter and joy.

Our Level 2 masked-up affair starts with the two asking what we wanted to be when we grew up. I shouted “astronaut”, but when asked to go into more detail about my failed career plight, panicked and changed my answer to popstar. I also managed to outline my first ‘gig’ standing on a chair at Valentines Buffet Restaurant at the age of 11.

And so began a show about a jazz musician named Sanders Valentine, an agent with a dubious accent (or four), a budding young busker-hating police officer on his first day on the force, a kindly burger-maker, and perhaps most importantly, taco night at Mum’s place.

The great thing about reviewing improv is that I can’t spoil the show – because no two shows are ever the same. Unless you were in the audience with me, you will never see what I saw, which was two alarmingly calm and collected actors ready for whatever the night threw at them. Their quick wit, intellect, craftsmanship, and chemistry served as catcher’s gloves when a ball was dropped. 

While there were a few hiccups, most were minor and quickly saved by these proficient players. The only real confusion for me was when they switched established characters – for instance when Porozny suddenly became Sanders after Jardine had played him for most of the show. Just a few solid anchors, like a couple of main characters that don’t change, would help the audience to keep their place amongst the sea of silliness, fun, and chaos.

Overall, this was a supremely entertaining show that I’d happily watch again and again. Just ignore me when I yell about astronauts next time.

First-time director Braden Lister has made a good fist of his debut production, despite COVID disruptions and a last-minute pack-in at the Gryphon Theatre, which is not New Players Theatre Company’s usual venue.

In Murder on the Menu, friends Skye (Ruby Braam) and Sophia (Sarah Upston) buy a dilapidated theatre which soon reveals itself to be full of the ghosts of Shakespearean characters who roam the auditorium declaiming lines from their famous plays. ‘Tights Boy’ Romeo (Pippa Liley) is the first to appear, followed in quick succession by Hamlet (Lyndon Jones) forever searching for drama queen Ophelia (Danica Frentz), a vain Juliet (Liv Calder), and the haggis-obsessed Macbeths (Euan Lucie-Smith and Yvonne Fisher). Skye and Sophia need to rid themselves of these pesky ghouls to be able to open a café, but how do you kill a fictional character who is already dead?

While the script is not high on intellectual challenge, Shakespeare fans will enjoy the revisioning of the most famous of his characters and the meta theatre jokes that pepper it. Those not so familiar with the theatre lexicon will enjoy the lively comedy that arises out of the murderous intentions of two people trying to off a group of ghosts.

The cast playing the Shakespearean characters all inhabit them with energy and relish, clearly enjoying the expanded dialogue and larger-than-life histrionics as they interact with each other. Lucie-Smith gives the performance of the night as Macbeth, revelling in his brash bonhomie, healthy appetite, and predilection for fart jokes. Braam and Upston are the glue that holds the narrative together and deliver that function with verve and good chemistry.

The lighting design by Jonassen Productions deserves special mention for its appropriateness and attention to detail. In one lovely moment, three lights that are seemingly just props unexpectedly come to life to great effect.

Congratulations to the whole team at New Players for a fun night of theatre that brings a splash of joy in these COVID-limited times.

Community Noticeboard has the dubious honour of being literally the only show in town, thanks to COVID-19. If you can drag yourself off the couch, it’s well worth an hour of your time to head to BATS, join the masked-up and physically distanced audience, and let your mind be absorbed in this beautifully rendered piece of “truth-based, spontaneous theatre”.

The premise is a simple one: take real-life notes found on the community noticeboards at supermarkets throughout Wellington and explore the needs, wants, desires, lives, and relationships behind the notice writers and readers.

This is improv, so a member of the audience is invited pre-show to pick a dozen notices from a bowl and pin them to the board that forms the minimal set, which the actors then choose from and read out to form the basis of each scene. While the detail of the short scenarios is improvised, the flow is structured well to keep it varied and interesting.

The excellent ensemble cast of Best on Tap (Nicola Pauling, Mary Little, Geoff Simmons, Tim Croft, and Barry Miskimmin) creates a stream of poignant and often hilarious mini stories of the human condition from offers of sale as diverse as a train set, silver horseshoe, and Insinkerator. Their talent for instant but genuine characterisation is evident in the diversity and warmth of the relationships they produce from set-ups such as a couple on a first date, a mum and two annoying teenage sons, women bonding over the physical decline of a loved one, and even two fish in a tank being terrorised by a cat.

The action on stage is expertly supported by Matt Hutton and his keyboard and lighting improvisor D' Woods. In one particularly brilliant moment, the lights in the dome respond perfectly to the mimed actions of a young man being taught wiring skills by his dad.

Community Noticeboard runs only until Saturday the 18^th of September and ticket sales are necessarily limited. It’s a treat. Don’t miss it.