NZ International Arts Festival Theatre, by Lynn Freeman
THE Arrival, honed and polished after its Auckland Festival premiere and some overseas appearances, shows just what New Zealand theatre practitioners can do when given the chance and a decent budget.
This is a big and boldly ambitious show, its full of magic and meaning, the puppetry and sfx will blow your mind. The Arrival is based on Shaun Tan’s graphic novel of the same name.
The story is timely and relevant, as a migrant flees his homeland in search of a better future. This is an exploration of migration, the strangeness of moving to other lands where everything from the language, food, customs and animals are baffling.
There is also the pain of leaving the people you love behind, especially when their safety is in jeopardy. It’s poignant, it’s full of feeling, and is also often unnerving.
No wonder it’s been picked up by overseas arts festivals, it deserves its success. The actors are also dancers (some of the dance sequences are more impressive than the formal dance works in the programme), puppeteers and set movers.
The gorgeous and versatile set is testament to ingenuity, the cast work as a perfect team, and this production is a triumph for them and the show’s directors Kate Parker and Julie Nolan.

On a far smaller scale is He Reo Aroha. Like The Arrival it’s performed overseas. Unlike that big spectacular, the set is a couple of chairs (New Zealand theatre specialises in chair sets) but with good direction and imagination they become a fishing boat.  
This musical two hander is about two childhood sweethearts, a pure love story. The charm is more in the performance than in the script. The actors, Kali Kopae and co-writer Jamie McCaskill are enchanting in all their roles, their onstage chemistry is believable, they make beautiful music together, and you leave feeling uplifted and happy.

While these two homegrown productions have been kicking around for a while, we also saw two world premieres of New Zealand work. 360, another wonderfully original show out of Auckland, has the audience sitting on swivel chairs while the action goes on above and around them on a circular stage.
It could so easily have been a gimmick and to be honest the storyline needs work, but the concept is as superb as its execution. From a fuse that runs around you, to a swan that swims past you, to someone being blown out of a cannon over your head, this is a thrilling theatrical experience. And Rosalie van Horek, if you’re reading this, you are the most amazing on stage seal - ever.

The weekend also saw the premiere of David Geary’s play Mark Twain and Me in Maoriland.
One of the starting points for this story was the fact that Huckleberry Finn’s creator came to New Zealand as part of a money making lecture tour. Ultimately though, it is really very little about Mark Twain and very much about Maori, Maori land and Maori-Pakeha history.
It is more of a lament for the loss of land, of lives and of faith. While it’s set in Whanganui and talks of a massacre there, this story represents the destruction that happened throughout New Zealand in the name of colonisation.
There is laughter amidst the grief, notably the missionary duet played with irreverent grotesqueness. The play is a bit elusive at times as you try to follow the story, piece together the vignettes, fill in the gaps between and work out Twain’s place in the story – and he is there for a reason. It is a work in progress but even now is a powerful and often very beautiful production.

Peter Brook is a legendary theatre director.  
He made his name with his 1970 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream set in a three sided white box set with ladders for entrances and exhibits and the fairies as acrobats and jugglers.
It seemed to set free the imagination of directors everywhere and allow them to take risks. New Zealand has waited decades to see one of his productions. But while I was hoping for something visionary, like The Arrival or 360, we saw a quiet, meditative, intellectual and worthy piece of theatre about great topics like colonisation or religious fanaticism.
Unfortunately, for all these qualities and all these possibilities, Eleven and Twelve failed to fire either the imagination or on an emotional level. It’s hard for any director or actor to conjure up the sense of wide scale death emanating from a religious disagreement over the number of prayer repetitions, with a handful of actors.
The all over the place narration did not help us either. This is not Brook’s finest work, but theatre is unquestionably a more exciting place for his involvement in it.

The Polish understand what it is to be invaded, to suffer hardship and emotional torment.  The Polish theatre company behind T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. taps into that reservoir of anguish to present this production.
We meet a comfortable upper middle class family who on the outside have it all. Their lives though are monotonous and they are all essentially emotional cripples. A mysterious stranger arrives, you don’t know where from or why, and proceeds to seduce each member of the family.
This is in part a study of what happens when primal emotions of love and lust are unleashed. The cast, especially the women, dig into this deep reservoir of pain for their roles and it is really something to see.
The seduction of the mother and the daughter’s disintegration afterwards are breathtaking. Underlying all this family drama is a commentary on the evils of capitalism.
The play would have more impact if it ended earlier, notably before the long concluding monologue, because the last image tells us all we need to know.  

The Tragical Life Of Cheeseboy continues the very dark tradition of shows in this year’s Festival programme.   
Given it’s for three year olds through to adults, I did wonder how the younger audience members would react to things like being asked if Cheeseboy, being made of cheese was a cannibal if he went and ate cheese himself.
This was followed by an explanation that human beings who eat meat aren’t cannibals because it’s different meat. While I didn’t especially like the show partly because I never warmed to either the narrator or the story, some of the youngsters there just about clapped their hands off. And ultimately they are the audience that counts.