Arts

Stories

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  Insider's Guide

  TEACHER and school guidance counsellor Esmee Elias-Tito has been co-coordinating ARTACTION! – the kids’ section of Porirua’s Festival of the Elements - for the past two years. This year the festival is set to be New Zealand’s biggest Waitangi… Continue

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  NZ talent for Chinese New Year

  THREE art forms will come together when Jenny Wollerman performs in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s concert celebration of  Chinese New Year. The Wellington based soprano will sing New Zealand composer Ross Harris’ song cycle The Floating… Continue

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  Art on Cuba

  WELLINGTON’S Cuba Street quarter has become the place in the city to have an art gallery. Another new gallery opens today (February 1) bringing the number of galleries in the quarter to at least a dozen. Ramsey Mortimer Gallery, at 253 Cuba Street, will… Continue

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  Steal the show

  YOU wouldn’t steal a car. But what if there were no consequences? That’s the inspiration behind Thomas Sainsbury’s production Crims. Sainsbury says, “ I was always interested in the criminal life, if you knew you wouldn’t get caught.… Continue

• Still planning at Downstage

  SIX months after financial difficulties saw the axing of shows and staff, Wellington’s Downstage Theatre is still finalising plans for its re-launch scheduled for next month. Theatre management remains tight lipped over its plans, but Capital Times understands… Continue

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  Flamenco here we come!

  FAST-FINGERED Paul Bousader practices flamenco guitar for up to eight hours a day in a flurry of impassioned staccato notes. Bousader, of Lebanese heritage and raised in Auckland, has devoted himself to mastering the energetic art from the Andulasian region of… Continue

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  Books and writers

  A diverse group of some of the finest international and national writers will converge on Wellington for next month’s Writers and Readers Week, part of the New Zealand International Arts Festival.  A Doctor Who screenwriter, a world leading environmentalist,… Continue

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  A cup of tea and a lie down...

  THE Fringe Festival is back for 2012 with the line up set to be announced this week. Jennifer Niven talked to the writer of Part Time Prostitute, one of the new shows in this year’s Fringe. Boredom with her office job was all it took for Lucy Johnson to… Continue

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  Fresh truths from the beach

  A good old Kiwi bach holiday is fun, but have you ever driven home with the feeling that you’re returning with a different group of people from the ones you set out with? While the holiday typically involves friends and family at the beach with good food… Continue

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  Oh to be a Hobbit

  HAIRY feet or particularly pointed ears may stand you in good stead at this Saturday’s casting call for Sir Peter Jackson’s latest project The Hobbit. Selectors are reported to be looking for “men under 163cm and women under 155cm, big men with… Continue

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  Paekakariki jazz

  IT may be called the Mulled Wine Concert, but there won’t be a drop of the winter warmer at this Saturday’s concert in Paekakariki. Mary Gow, a Paekakariki resident, has been organising the concert series for the past three years and with little funding… Continue

• Festival on track for success

  ORGANISERS if next month’s New Zealand International Arts Festival say ticket says are “going well” but say they have not compared them with sales from previous years. “We have seen some great movement over the Christmas break and all… Continue

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  Summer colours

  ALTHOUGH the weather seems to be undecided, summer really is here and the city council’s Summer City events are back to celebrate. We’ve picked out the highlights from January’s programme… After almost a month to digest Christmas dinner… Continue

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  Arts achiever heads to Auckland

  HE’S only 32, but the director of The New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Justin Morgan has already led a career many artists only dream about. Earlier this month Morgan left the academy in search of a new challenge working at The Depot, in Devonport, Auckland.He… Continue

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  Death, culturally

  THERE is more than one way to deal with death. New Zealand is home to some 200 different cultures each with their own traditions and rituals surrounding death and dying. In its latest exhibition Death and Diversity the Museum of City and Sea has gathered a sample… Continue

• Artistry awarded

  A publisher, a painter and a brass band enthusiast were among those of Wellington’s artistic community named in the New Year’s honours. Managing Director of Huia Publishers, Robyn Bargh, became a Companion of the NZ Order of Merit (CNZM) for services… Continue

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  New Year’s 11/12: Pick your party

  WHATEVER your taste, there’s a New Year’s shindig waiting for you. We’ve summed up this city’s wildest parties as well as some slighty-more-civilised alternatives so you can choose where to be for the big countdown. Beyond the Black… Continue

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  “Bah! Humbug!”

  ST PETER’S Anglican Church’s stance towards its Christmas concert is directly from Charles Dicken’s Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge’s famous response to the festive season is the theme of an organ recital being held tonight at the historic inner… Continue

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  Indie pop from Beirut

  AMERICAN  indie rock band Beirut are set to play Wellington for a second time in January. Formed in early 2006, Beirut’s style is a mixture of world music and indie pop. “We’re a pop group really at our core,” explains bassist Paul… Continue

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  Dancing the new year

  TO dance all day every day sounds romantic, but the thought of actually doing it is somewhat daunting. Especially if you’re retired. But that’s what Newtown local Elaine Lethbridge, who is now retired is looking forward to at New Years Eve as she… Continue

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  A discerning buyer

  MAORI artist Darcy Nicholas owns an extremely precious mask by Dempsey Bob, a Canadian ‘master of wood carving’ of Tahltan and Tlingit First Nations (North Western Canada and Alaska) descent. Bob came to the Nicholas’ house, took one of his… Continue

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  Lindon Puffin brings hope to the holidays

  SICK bags are for people who feel sick, aren’t they? Not for singer-songwriter Lindon Puffin. He uses sick bags to write down his songs. Puffin, who will be performing in Wellington this week, says when you’re inspired by something there is an instant… Continue

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  The Muppets meet the next generation

  THE MUPPETS inhabit a world where pigs and frogs can talk but chickens can only cluck, one where they acknowledge that they’re on screen but never the fact that there’s a hand inside them, and one where they take being silly very seriously. But Aro… Continue

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  Magical thinking

  WELLINGTON City Council may be rethinking its decision to shift the Gardens Magic Concert Series from January to March and April in 2012 in the wake of a lot of negative feedback, according to Capital Times council sources. However, the official council position… Continue

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  And the winner is ....

  RUGBY and politics were the winners on the night at this year’s Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards. I, George Nepia, Hone Kouka’s play about the rugby legend, was named production of the year, and also took two directing awards for newcomer Jason Te Kare… Continue

• Chapman Tripp awards

  Critics Wild Card : Johann Nortje for outstanding AV design (Wake Less, Hear to See, When the Rain Stops Falling). The Absolutely Positively Wellington Award for the Most Original Production of the Year : Hear to See - Capital E National Theatre for Children.… Continue

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  Tall toy tale

  IT hasn’t all been playtime for Wellington director Sophie Roberts. With a rolling cast of 35 actors, her latest production Toys, opening at Bats Theatre this week, has been a logistical challenge. “Working around the schedules of 35 people and… Continue

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  Boxed environment

  INTERPRETING our environment is the theme for the new Courtenay Place light box exhibition, which begins tomorrow. Imaginary Geographies looks at interpretations of the environment from four different artists from around the world – New Zealand, Australia,… Continue

• No futile exhibit

  PHOTOGRAPHY based artist Siren Deluxe opens her last Wellington exhibition this week before heading to a new job in Auckland. The controversial artist has been exhibiting here for more than ten years and An Exercise in Futility, opens at Photospace, the gallery… Continue

• Artists adrift

  THE drift north of local artists to Auckland is one of the concerns behind the council’s draft Arts and Culture strategy. Councillor Ahipene-Mercer, portfolio leader for Arts and Culture, says that and the pressure currently being experienced by local arts… Continue

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  A nervous reaction to Christmas

  CHRISTMAS with Raybon Kan will be equivalent to a bum on a photocopier, but in an intellectual way. The Wellington comedian launches his solo Christmas comedy show Clear and Present Manger at Downstage on Tuesday and promises a “deconstruction” of… Continue

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  All cricket for Bats

  SIR Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh not only saved a theatre venue with their purchase of number 1 Kent Terrace last week. The movie moguls also secured the future of one of Wellington’s iconic buildings. Built in the 1923 as the lodge for the Manchester Unity… Continue

• Creative budgets

  ALL art budgets are catered to this Christmas with Mark Hutchins Gallery serving up a large exhibition called ‘Less than 3K’ while Artrium Gallery’s going small on price but big on selection with an everything-under-$200 exhibit called ‘Le… Continue

• Quoil spoils

  QUOIL on Willis Street is bringing colour into focus this Christmas with a window display called Colour Crash. Each week a new piece of jewellery features in the window and details are sent out to the Quoil email list. Local jewellers in the mix include Caroline… Continue

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  Can’t straighten out this Fringe

  (L-R) Hannah Clarke, Emma Flack and Brianne Kerr from the Creative Capital Arts Trust have organised a line up of the bizarre and the entertaining for the New Zealand Fringe Festival 2012. “We have everything from superheroes and space bitches to traditional… Continue

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  Ivy creeps no longer

  MUSICIAN Ivy Rossiter spent her youth finding ways not to perform her music. The singer and guitarist from Auckland, now one half of an indie musical duo called Luckless, suffered a debilitating fear of audiences. Instead of trying to get seen and heard by forming… Continue

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  Fifty years of song

  IT all began 50 years ago with a group of bored husbands. They’d been ferrying their wives, members of the Khandallah League of Mothers Choir, to and from weekly practices and sitting around while the rehearsals took place. Then someone had a bright idea… Continue

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  New York left in the dust

  A bright young American with a passion for music packed up his life at New York’s Ithaca College and moved to Wellington to study theatre. An odd choice for Gareth Hobbs to make, moving from a university close to New York, America’s vast musical and… Continue

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  Drypnz’ oriental canvas

  Photo-shy street artist Drypnz (pronounced ‘Drippins’) will stand up and share his creative secrets with classrooms of refugee children in Asia this December. The elusive Drypnz, 24, whose curious accent reflects his upbringing in England, the Caribbean… Continue

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  Tripp nominations

  Wellington’s theatre critics have narrowed down the best of the city’s theatre from over 100 professional productions with their nominations for this year’s Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards. The nominations are: Brancott Estate Award for… Continue

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  Jazz firefly learns a new language

  JUSTIN Firefly Clarke left for Germany with jazz as his main musical language but came back a world musician. Wellington born and bred (Karori Normal school, Onslow college and the Wellington branch of the New Zealand School of Music), he spent seven years in Berlin.… Continue

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  Roseneath’s ragtime family

  IT’S a long way from New Orleans to Roseneath but that’s where – if you’re lucky – you’ll find the Roseneath Centennial Ragtime Band practising in a big old house on the hill. Mike Jensen and Dayle Jellyman, friends and co-founders… Continue

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  Carpet ride of magic

  THE pantomime season has begun and audiences at Circa Theatre will embark on a carpet ride of song, dance, silliness and magic this summer. Bringing back Roger Hall’s Aladdin to the Wellington stage, director Susan Wilson has assembled a cast of well known… Continue

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  Towards a professional choir

  PEPE Becker’s dream is for New Zealand to have a professional choir on the same standing as the NZ Symphony Orchestra. Becker, founding manager of Wellington’s Baroque Voices, is also first soprano in the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir, the country’s… Continue

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  Art out for Christmas

  THERE’S a lot of art at Kim Young’s place, particularly around Christmas. When she’s not working at the Wellington Museum of City and Sea, Young can often be found at her favourite local galleries with daughters Coco and Pippi. Now the festive… Continue

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  Insider's Guide

  FASHION-LOVER Sadie Hawker is originally from Wales, though she’s been living in Wellington for more than two years now. She works for Massey University’s College of Creative Arts and in her spare time sells her own handmade jewellery, Ssh by Sadie.… Continue

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  Not for the faint hearted

  HANNAH Salmon tells it like it is. The 21 year old fine arts student has just finished the third issue of her self-published magazine, or ‘zine’, called Daily Secretion. The often-explicit publication is a social critique of perverted obsessions that… Continue

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  Bark with a bite

  GROWING up in Wellington, Jackie van Beek’s family home was littered with huge, disabled puppets. The actress’s mother was a puppeteer for the Crippled Children’s Society and toured the puppets in schools to educate kids about special needs.… Continue

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  Battling Wellywood

  THE public may have voted on the alternative options for Wellywood, but a member of the panel charged with selecting the finalists is labelling the selection process a farce. Panel member Andy Boreham, who led the anti-Wellywood sign protest, has accused the… Continue

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  World stage in Wellington

  IT’S a tough rap travelling the globe scouting out the world’s best theatre, dance and music, and Lissa Twomey has had to do it. For the past five years she’s travelled the world pursuing the performances that will thrill New Zealand audiences.… Continue

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  Moana doodles the future

  THERE’S a girl in Aro Valley who wants to save the birds. Moana Williams, 12, entered the Google Doodle logo competition, My Wish for New Zealand, with a colourful drawing of New Zealand native birds sitting in a Pohutakawa tree. She was shortlisted in her… Continue

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  Banjos not just for Hillbillies

  TWO young banjo virtuosos are touring New Zealand to let the country know that there’s more to the instrument than first meets the eye. Alex Borwick and Catherine “BB” Bowness play banjos, mainly associated with country folk and American Hillbillies.… Continue

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  Jump on the brass bandwagon

  THE Central Band of the Royal New Zealand Air Force plays pop classics including YMCA, I’m a Believer, and even current chart hits from American TV show Glee.  What was originally a serious pastime has come a long way from its roots in 19th Century… Continue

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  Nun flies to 30th birthday

  WHEN Roger Shepherd began Flying Nun Records, he hoped there would be enough people interested to buy just enough to enable him to go another round. They were humble expectations from the “cheeky, irreverent” record company, quick to prove itself as… Continue

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  Fat sound of summer

  THEY’VE finally cracked it. After five years of trying, Homegrown has excitedly announced that a local band with huge international acclaim, Fat Freddy’s Drop, is to headline the New Zealand music festival in 2012. The band, one of New Zealand’s… Continue

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  Born of destruction

  MARIA Dabrowska knows that if it weren’t for World War Two, she wouldn’t exist. The Wellington-based dancer was born in Lower Hutt - but her mum’s Polish, her Dad’s Dutch and both were displaced from wartime Europe, and settled in New… Continue

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  Ready to rock you

  FIREWORKS maestro Robert McDermott promises a bolder, brasher Pelorus Trust Sky Show on November 5. McDermott, who has designed, produced and fired the show since inception 17 years ago, says there will be three barges shooting off special effects fireworks including… Continue

• Last days of Oceania

  WHILE figures have not yet been released Oceania, the collaborative exhibition between City Gallery and Te Papa, has attracted fewer visitor numbers than predicted. The exhibition of visual art, culture and history from across the Pacific region ends on November… Continue

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  Tea anyone??

  IT has all the glossy pictures of cup cakes, scones and fine china, but there’s a little more to the  recipes in Jonathan Cameron’s high tea cook book than first meets the eye. In his graduating piece from Wellington’s Massey University… Continue

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  View of futuristic vision

  IT was the most expensive silent movie ever made and one of the most celebrated films in cinema history. Now Wellington audiences have the chance to experience Fritz Lang’s futuristic 1927 film Metropolis complete with Gottfried Huppertz’s original… Continue

• Sunday in Italy

  IT’S hard to pronounce but easy to watch: A group of Sbandieratori - Italian flag wavers - will bring the old European tradition to Wellington for the first time this week. In Italy, each village and town holds annual historical re-enactments and celebrates… Continue

• Wellywood or what?

  AT midnight on November 6, the drawn-out Wellywood sign decision will be a step closer as voting in the “Wellyword or what?” competition closes. Voting for the five public-submitted and panel-chosen designs for the sign on the Miramar Peninsula opened… Continue

• The pressure’s on Downstage

  $90,000  from Wellington City Council may have secured the immediate future of Downstage, but the theatre will have to demonstrate it can continue to operate viably. Councillors voted unanimously last week to approve the theatre’s funding request after… Continue

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  No sleep for ballet master

  THERE’S still board level discussion about moving the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s base from Wellington’s St James Theatre to Auckland. Greg Horsman is Ballet Master for the Royal New Zealand Ballet and choreographed the company’s production… Continue

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  The influence of music

  WELL known Wellington composer and musical eminence Jenny McLeod studied under Oliver Messiaen,  the Frenchman  who is remembered for having both composed and first performed what has been described as one of the greatest chamber works of the 20th century. … Continue

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  Submit to Halloween

  TANYA Drewery staples stockings to her thighs and a paper hearts to her chest with a staple gun. The circus performer relishes the moment the audience realises her grotesque tricks are not staged. “I like the intense shock reaction. A lot of people… Continue

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  Hot taste of coffee and success

  FLAXWORKS Theatre company began with coffee, and lots of it. Hyperactive with caffeine, Alex Ellis and creative friend Phil Ormsby found they had a common calling. She wanted to be an actress – “I just had to get out and do it” – and he… Continue

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  Strange instrument

  A walk in Civic Square is often a voyage of discovery.  Last week saw a  couple of musos engrossed in the workings of a strange instrument.  Kane Laing, a guitar playing history student who plans to do composition next year, was chatting to Zane… Continue

• I just swear at people...

  IF you believed everything you read on the internet, you’d think that Jay Whalley was a totally hardcore punk rocker. But the vocalist for popular Aussie punk band Frenzal Rhomb tells Jennifer Niven it’s all incorrect. Frenzal Rhomb has apparently courted… Continue

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  Downstage funding plea

  A proposed investment fund to secure the future of significant regional events and attractions would put an end to groups such as Downstage coming to the council cap in hand each year. Downstage will ask Wellington City Council this week for $90,000 to get the… Continue

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  Happy birthday to us

  Capital Times celebrates 37 years as Wellington’s independent newspaper. In the midst of the RWC buzz we begin another year of giving you the Best of Wellington. Our annual Best of Wellington poll, results published last week, (a 16% increase in responses,… Continue

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  A lifetime walking the boards

  SHE’S New Zealand’s oldest working actor who recently won her first award for acting. It’s a good one. Dame Kate Harcourt, one of New Zealand’s most accomplished and respected leading actresses, was awarded first prize in the Best Female… Continue

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  Wellington’s Big Fat Gypsy Wedding

  WELLINGTON’S Gypsy Balkan brass band Niko Ne Zna sing about a Gypsy woman who wants to sell her horse and her house to go dancing. It’s a colourful story typical of the Balkan people, says the band’s founding member, saxophone player Frankie Curac,… Continue

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  Gone bush

  WHEN Mara Simpson’s musically-inclined dad picked her up from the airport after a trip to South America, she was holding nothing but a new passport and a copy of the novel Shantaram. The singer/songwriter (named ‘Mara’ after the big area of… Continue

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  From coins to Brahms

  A coin collection gave Mikhail Ovrutsky, a boy in communist Russia, a glimpse of the world outside the Soviet Union. At a time when few Russians could travel, Ovrutsky’s father Ilya, a flautist with the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre and the State Symphony Orchestra,… Continue

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  What a weekend

  IT’S as we expected. Rugby supporters in Wellington for the weekend were well behaved. Around 20,000 Welsh, Irish, Springboks and Wallabies fans were in town and as many as 70,000 people packed out the city centre on Saturday night. Wellington Police… Continue

• Get the kids into space

  THE kids can launch a rocket to the moon, learn the ballad of Orpheus or celebrate the Diwali Festival of Lights these school holidays. At the Carter Observatory visitors can witness and feel a rocket launch and touch a real piece of Moon rock at a new exhibition… Continue

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  Kapa haka in the blood

  HINEMIHIATA Lardelli was doing kapa haka almost before she could walk. Her father, ta moko artist Derek, started the kapa haka team in the small East Cape village of Whangara in 1993, the year she was born. She was taken to rehearsals as a baby, later joined… Continue

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  Point, shoot, upload

  WELLINGTONIANS Ben Moore and Kathy Scott Dowell have organised a creative photographic event for the public to enjoy in the month of October. The 22 year old photography enthusiasts, eager to encourage others to dust off their cameras, have renamed this month “Photober.”… Continue

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  A frisky God woos feisty lover

  TWO internationally renowned Indian classical dancers with a shared personal history are to reunite at Victoria University to perform the love story of playful blue God Krishna. Gayatri Bala is in Wellington for the third time to work with Vivek Kinra on new production… Continue

• The Big Maori Art Show

  AUSTRALIAN Aboriginal artist Danny Eastwood says he might cause a bit of interest when he wears his Aussie rugby jumper at New Zealand’s biggest ever showing of contemporary Maori art.  He’s here for the Maori Art Market, on this week at the Te… Continue

• Making his Mark

  MARK Dorrell came to New Zealand to retire but he’s never been so busy. Recently he became musical director of the Orpheus Choir, and he’s also directing Toi Whakaari’s second year musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee on top of… Continue

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  Wellingtonians are the best - 2011 poll results

  WELLINGTONIANS are eclectic, busy and a little bit nuts and live in a city where the breeze keeps the air clean and the Aucklanders away. Just some of your verdicts about the city we all call home revealed by readers in the Capital Times’ Best of Wellington… Continue

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  Sydney boys still might knock your head off

  Forget everything you know about music, it’s time to meet pop-garage band The Shake Up. Tim Browning, vivacious drummer for the Sydney trio, is quick to tell Jennifer Niven that those clichéd words really rark him up… Yeah they’re… Continue

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  Samoa exposed

  WELLINGTON based Samoan writer and director Tusi Tamasese has some advice for young aspiring film makers, marry a partner with a good job. THE Berhampore resident has just completed his first full length movie, The Orator, which opens  in New Zealand cinemas… Continue

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  Instruments of healing

  CLARE Galambos-Winter was 16 when the Nazis invaded Hungary and her life changed forever. She and her family were among the Jews deported from the city of Szombathely to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. From Auschwitz she was selected for slave labour at a… Continue

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  From the dark a son has risen

  ABOUT 15 years ago, it was reported that only two teenagers had been expelled for drugs that year, one from Onslow College and one from Wellington High. Tommy Benefield was the teenager, expelled from both schools in a space of four months. Benefield, who grew… Continue

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  No culture, no Ria

  RIA Hall grew up half way between the marae and the rugby club in Tauranga, deeply involved in the Maori social and sporting community. The 28 year old Wellington-based singer – known most recently for singing World in Union at the opening ceremony of the… Continue

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  Married to the music

  IF music be the food of love then the New Zealand String Quartet has a full stomach. Regular NZSQ members Helene Pohl and Rolf Gjelsten, who are a couple, will be joined by Andrew and Julia Joyce for the quartet’s annual candlelight concert at St Mary of… Continue

• Reflected glory for designers

  THE nation has voted on their favourite piece from the World of Wearable Art awards show and 3,000 people have agreed: Erna and Karl van der Wat’s design Reflection takes first prize. Made of aluminium tubing and steel, the creators describe it as, “reflecting… Continue

• Bloody party

  LAST year thousands of Wellington party animals came to rave at Illuminate’s paint party, dressed all in white, where they were sprayed with neon colours while dancing to fast-paced DJs. This year’s theme is a little darker: Illuminate has announced… Continue

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  Wellington skates on again

  GLIDING and sliding around the waterfront will be an option for Wellingtonians for a month from September 30. Plans for a temporary ice rink, under the sails on Queens Wharf next to the TSB Bank Arena, include attracting 30,000 skaters; visitors to the Rugby… Continue

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  Lucky legs

  Francis Christeller is one of a handful of Kiwi dancers who don’t have to worry about where their next pay cheque is coming from. FOR the past three years the 24 year old has been employed as a fulltime dancer with Footnote, New Zealand’s longest… Continue

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  Jess Chambers headed back to her roots

  AS a child in her small American town, Kiwi-American singer-songwriter Jess Chambers went to Pentecostal church three times a week, wide-eyed and passionate about the singing (but falling asleep during the preaching). “There was always singing, clapping… Continue

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  A hug for the Basin

  THE Basin Reserve iconic cricket ground will get a loving ‘hug of protection’ from opponents of the New Zealand Tranport Agency’s proposed flyover. The event, at noon on September 25, is to highlight the Basin Reserve roading options. The two… Continue

• Pick a peck of pix

  A large wall of kindness is slowly taking shape in the window of The Workshop picture framers on Upper Cuba Street. It’s a simple, neat idea. You pick a piece of artwork, go away and do something nice for a stranger, come back to the shop and write up what… Continue

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  Sea green queen

  THE two-year Costume Construction diploma at Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School accepts only six students a year. 2011 student Sophie is showcasing her green sea queen costume modeled here in the annual Costume Showcase at the Drama School. Costume Showcase,… Continue

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  Downstage will rise again

  THERE’S optimism for the future of Downstage Theatre and planning is underway to ensure it opens next year. Last week, New Zealand’s oldest theatre  announced it was in serious financial trouble and cancelling shows for the rest of the year.… Continue

• Anarchist of love and grace

  I’ll let you in on Aotearoa’s best kept musical secret, though almost I’m reluctant to share him. His name’s Fraser Ross and there’s a disarming depth to his eyes. He radiates a worldly peacefulness that makes me feel my questions… Continue

• Cultural Wellington

  THE New Zealand Symphony Orchestra is singing a new song with the appointment of Christopher Blake, currently the Chief Executive and Secretary for Labour at the Department of Labour, to the position of the NZSO’s Chief Executive. He’s also a composer… Continue

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  Cheerleading for R16s

  DEATH by Cheerleader is R16 for a reason. The racy play was supposed to show the serious side of the often stereotyped sport, giving well-educated women the respect they deserve. But no one wants to see a serious show about cheerleading, says starring actress Claire… Continue

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  Soul and spirit

  SPIRITED Kiwi soul singer Bella Kalolo likens her debut album to a first teddy bear: “You want it all to yourself.” That’s why she didn’t draw on industry contacts to create Without The Paper, but focused on her own creative process with… Continue

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  Never been a show like this

  THERE won’t be an oval ball in sight. Rather than at the stadium it’ll be at the Opera House  and the battle will be between dancers from South Africa,  the Pacific Islands, and New Zealand. “This will be the World Cup on stage,”… Continue

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  For the love of indie pop

  BRENT Harris’ saved pennies got him his first drum kit when he was just nine years old. It cost $400 and he’s got no idea how he scraped it together. “I think my sister lent me $100,” he laughs. It’s been 15 years since then and… Continue

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  Under the Radar

  FORGET Sir Ed: it’s time to celebrate the untold stories of New Zealand history, like that of nineteenth century Kiwi balloonist Charles Lorraine, who used to jump out of the basket and perform gymnastic stunts en route to the ground. Then there’s the… Continue

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  Where cultures merge

  THE most anticipated pageant of our Indian community takes place in the Capital on Saturday. Eleven young aspirants are vying for the title of Miss India Wellington in a competition celebrating Kiwi-Indian beauty, fashion, dance and music. Organiser Dharmesh… Continue

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  Sexy monsters

  VAUNE Mason loves monsters. Fanged and furry creatures have fascinated the Wellington-based jewellery designer since she was a kid. Now she’s combining her curious predilection with another hobby, burlesque dancing, in a new show, simply named Monster Burlesque. … Continue

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  Internals exposed

  IT’S 134 years old, has more than 3,500 pipes and is spread out over two levels of Wellington’s St Paul’s Cathedral. Now the cathedral’s organ is to be exposed like never before in a recital far removed from the traditional performance.… Continue

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  Jealous of Katherine Mansfield

  THE Katherine Mansfield Birthplace (KMB), one of the gems in Thorndon’s crown has curated an exhibition of six portraits of the writer, some of them unseen by the Wellington public before. The portraits reveal different facets of this complex, enigmatic… Continue

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  Jesus was an All Black

  WELLINGTON’S  St Paul’s Cathedral has taken a tongue in cheek look at New Zealand’s other religion, rugby. On display in the cathedral for the next few weeks is New Zealand Icon, a painting by local artist Don Little depicting the figure… Continue

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  The most of an opportunity

  IT’S not all fame and glamour as a fulltime dancer. For Black Grace’s newest junior dancer, Thomas Fonua, it also means being responsible for the chores. “It’s my job to mop the floors of the dance studio,” the 19 year old says.… Continue

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  I, George Nepia

  Wellington playwright Hone Kouka speaks of George Nepia as though the two were friends. BUT while there are family connections (Nepia farmed down the road from the Kouka family farm in Rangitukia, Hawkes Bay, and Nepia taught Kouka’s father to play rugby)… Continue

• Bus stop boutique

  THERE’S a new mural in Xoë Hall’s ‘hall’ of fame. The 25 year old artist has just painted a bright red bus stop and dedicated it to New Zealand Fashion Week. Bus Stop Boutique’s located opposite Shalimar Minimart at the start… Continue

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  Arts funding blues

  WELLINGTON’S Circa Theatre has come out battling against its major funder Creative New Zealand. The theatre relies on Creative New Zealand for nearly a third of its income but last week the funding body cut its funding to the theatre by 15 percent. Circa… Continue

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  Movie people make interesting artists

  GINO Acevedo has always loved monsters. As a child growing up in Phoenix Arizona he would be glued to the TV every Saturday morning watching the monster classics Frankenstein and The Wolf Man. He went on to create his own monsters, first designing costume kits… Continue

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  Oh to be a Hobbit

  THERE’S a man in the States who’s desperate to join the stars who are returning to Wellington to continue filming The Hobbit. Patrick Spadaccino is a life-long Tolkien fan and he would love to play even the smallest role in telling the story. As flying… Continue

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  Sisters of sound

  HOW does a progressive 12th century German nun become the inspiration for Wellington girls to form St. Rupertsberg, an all girl indie-pop octet? St. Rupertsberg is named after a monastery founded by Hildegard von Bingen, and there’s a strong connection. It’s… Continue

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  Relating to dance

  JULIAN Pellizzaro sees a dance partnership as a relationship. Funny, then, that he dances between lots of different women. Jokes aside, the elements of any decent relationship are there: you’re strangers at the beginning and you develop an intense interaction.… Continue

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  Seriously musical

  HE was admitted at just eight years old to a special school for young talent at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest. He’s grown up to be one of the youngest of a dazzling cohort of Hungarian pianists. His name is Péter Nagy and he’s… Continue

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  Politics at Bats

  WELLINGTON actor Phil Grieve met Sir Robert Muldoon when he was 16. Grieve was at Parliament to accept his Boys Brigade Queens Award from the then Prime Minister. “He was shorter than me even then,” Grieve remembers. Now he’s playing Muldoon… Continue

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  A new age for Page

  HE loves our coffee, our beer, our food and our people – so much so that this week, Australian multi-instrumentalist Adam Page is moving to Wellington. “Wellington is one of the sickest cities I’ve ever been to. I came over for the first time… Continue

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  Back to the moshpit

  GETTING ready to interview Nigel Regan from legendary Wellington rock band Head Like A Hole (aka HLAH), I decided to listen to some of their 90s classics. Immediately transported back to my teenage, bogan days – I recalled with special fondness the one time… Continue

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  Invert your assumptions

  WRITER Arthur Meek expected to have a laugh when he picked up a book called Our Maoris at a market, but instead he found a story so good, he wrote a play about it. On The Upside-Down of the World is based on Our Maoris - the memoir of the young English wife of… Continue

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  It’s hip to be square

  Sports jocks watch out: Your time in the limelight might be over. Geeks are back in vogue. THEY’RE ready to change the world, just as soon as they work out the source code. Among the rich and famous, geekery just keeps on growing. Vin Diesel has been… Continue

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  Dazzled by Vegas

  TIM Beveridge has been up all hours with his baby daughter, but he’s still animated about Vegas, the spectacular show he’s bringing to Wellington. He’s clearly excited, but quick to mention the tough entertainment industry, which dictates the… Continue

• Creative capital

  TWO of three writers honoured with the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement, and the $60,000 that goes with it, are Wellingtonians. Novelist Dame Fiona Kidman and historian James Belich received their awards at Premier House earlier this week,… Continue

• City of carnivals

  THE future of Wellington’s Fringe Festival and Cuba Street Carnival seem assured with the creation of a new trust to oversee the events. The Creative Capital Arts Trust (CCAT) replaces the Fringe Arts Trust and the Cuba Street Carnival Collective Trust… Continue

• Residents speak on city’s future

  WELLINGTONIANS have had their say on the city’s future. The Wellington 2040 City Strategy invited residents to have their say on the future development of Wellington over the next 30 years. Submissions closed last Friday. While only 115 formal submissions… Continue

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  Just the right image

  SHE plays jazz on her trumpet and sings opera for light relief. Imogen Thirlwall might be just one of the band, but she must be exactly the right image for the New Zealand School of Music. She plays jazz trumpet with the NZSM’s Big Band under Rodger Fox, … Continue

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  Spellbound by comics

  WHEN your first words were “Donald Duck,” a career in comics is undoubtedly a fair choice. Dylan Horrocks, prolific Auckland-born graphic novelist, has read and drawn comics his whole life. Firm in the belief that cartoons can be enjoyed by young… Continue

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  If he can do it, I can

  In 2008, director Gaylene Preston sent me into a tent at the Parihaka International Peace Festival, to see a poetry performance. I sat down on a beanbag near the front as a tall Maori man approached the microphone, cleared his throat, and began to weave his magic.… Continue

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  Something to say

  WHEN Harbour City Electric started playing their residency at Sandwiches in 2006, it was hard to tell exactly who was in the band. At various stages the lineup included members of The Black Seeds, Recloose Live Band, Olmecha Supreme, Electric Wire Hustle and… Continue

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  Mobbed by music

  DON’T be surprised if you’re mobbed by a choir next week. It’s The Big Sing and more than 700 secondary school students from 22 choirs descend on the Capital for three days of fierce competition to find New Zealand’s top school choir.… Continue

• Earplugs recommended

  THE saying is that good things take time, and this is certainly true when it comes to Auckland band Black River Drive. The band, led by singer/songwriter Sam Browne, was formed in 2008 – yet Browne had been playing and writing since first picking up the… Continue

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  Get the kids away from the play stations!

  IT’S time to dust off the trainers and bust out the gym shorts. The Wellington Indoor Community Sports Centre in Cobham Park, Kilbirnie, is ready to open after 18 months of construction, but ICSC manager Craig Hutchings wants to clarify a widespread misconception… Continue

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  Shakespeare meets Marge Simpson

  RICK Miller is a man with a bad dose of schizophrenia. His show MacHomer, opening at The Opera House this week, has a cast of more than 50 and stars Miller as, well, everybody. MacHomer is a mash-up of tv’s The Simpsons and Shakespeare’s Macbeth with… Continue

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  Keeping it straight

  In every society, there are invisible people. The old and infirm, the disabled, those from foreign backgrounds, children; we write them off as inconsequential, winding our lives around them, talking down to them, and looking through them. Pippa Carvell is an… Continue

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  Mural to heal ‘severed’ district

  THEY hope art will bring them together. Kathy Smith, owner of Ballroom Café, says small business owners near the junction of Adelaide Road, Riddiford and John Streets are suffering “bad feelings” because of road changes that took away their carparks,… Continue

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  Hollywood at Bats

  IT’S been a busy year for Anya Tate-Manning. The Wellington actor has performed in August Osage County at Circa, McKenzie Country at Bats and in the sell out political satire Public Service Announcements. Now she’s treading the boards in Richard Huber’s… Continue

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  Let there be light

  DUNEDIN singer songwriter Matt Langley comes across much like his music, unpretentious, charming and unafraid to show a little vulnerability. “I feel the world’s quite strange and terrifying… but when it comes to the people you know, I see… Continue

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  Some dance with your rugby

  With the Rugby World Cup now only weeks away auditions for performers to entertain the crowds at the Westpac stadium are under way. Dance teacher Catherine Reid is assembling a squad of 16 dancers to perform at the Canada vs France match on September 18, and when… Continue

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  Tourists green with envy

  IT’S well-known as beautiful, green, and tourist-attracting, but the sale of genuine New Zealand greenstone or “pounamu” is being threatened by cheap, imported imitation pieces that go for a song. These mass produced souvenirs are mainly made… Continue

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  Medieval Knievel

  WHILE others his age are getting down to Beyonce in nightclubs, Dimitrios Theodoridis is passionately supporting Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music through The Historical Arts Trust (THAT) – an organisation that promotes performance and education in… Continue

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  Theatre of choice

  AUDIENCES will get to choose their perfect night out at the theatre at Circa’s new production, Eight. It’s interactive theatre and audiences can choose their own cast of six from eight characters, either on-line ahead of time, or by iPhone in the… Continue

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  We’re all Pacific Islanders

  CITY Gallery and Te Papa have come together for Oceania; an exhibition celebrating the culture and arts of Aotearoa and our Pacific cousins. Artist Robin White and photographer Greg Semu both feature in City Gallery’s Oceania: Imagining the Pacific exhibit.… Continue

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  Angle and poise from Crows

  CROWS Feet Dance Collective aren’t taking themselves too seriously. Mocking the school rhythmic gymnastic classes of the 1950s and 1960s, in Angle Poise the Crows play a group of ageing Russian ex-gymnasts on a tour of New Zealand with their hoop, balls… Continue

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  Soul sisters

  SISTERS Madeleine, Anji and Priya Sami – who make up band The Sami Sisters – overlap and interrupt each other relentlessly. It’s almost better to imagine them as one creature with three heads – like the troll off Willow – but a hot… Continue

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  Climbing the pie charts

  THE costumes are fitting. All three members of The Nudge – singer and guitarist Ryan Prebble, keys player James Coyle and drummer Iraia Whakamoe – are animals. Prebble, who’s released a solo album, toured internationally with The Black Seeds and… Continue

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  Two lives, two worlds

  Paul Wolffram is a man leading a double life. Happy at home in Wellington with his wife Victoria Manning and young family, Wolffram’s also been adopted into a family of a people living in the rain forests of southern Papua New Guinea. He’s more… Continue

• Crafty gem for sale

  AFTER 42 years in business, Les and Dianne Dyne of Goldings Handcrafts are ready to retire – and they’re selling up. The shop opened in the Cuba precinct in 1969 – some will still remember climbing the Tory Street stairs opposite the old match… Continue

• Art show stoppers

  WELLINGTON artists are making an impression at this year’s New Zealand Art Show. Five are among 11 finalists for the Signature Piece Art Award. The artists are Susanne Kerr, Karim Sahai, Steve Thomson, Richard Thurston and Catherine Roberts. Kapiti Coast… Continue

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  Australian drama at Circa

  WHEN Wellington actor Sophie Hambleton finishes her role in Circa Theatre’s When the Rain Stops Falling she’s heading to the big lights of Auckland. Hambleton plays the younger Gabrielle York in the play, opening for the first time in Wellington this… Continue

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  The woman in breeches

  MEZZO soprano Bianca Andrew loves wearing the trousers. Andrew is Oberon, King of the Fairies, in the New Zealand School of Music’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s a “trouser” or “breeches” role, which in… Continue

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  What’s in a name?

  YEARS of playing together have gone down the drain for a group of local musicians. Francis Curac, founding member of band Niko Ne Zna, has split the group, trademarked the name and formed a new band – prohibiting old members from using the name. For the… Continue

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  Cleansing theatre

  IT opens with a splash and threatens to change bath time forever. The New Zealand premiere of Soap opens at Wellington’s St James Theatre on July 28. A mixture of circus, comedy and cabaret, Soap is a show of music and acrobatics set in the confines of… Continue

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  Relating in a virtual world

  ONE of the directors from this year’s Young and Hungry festival of new theatre is about to have something ridiculously young and hungry dropped in her lap. Rachel Lennart’s about to have a baby. “I just found out they’re doing to do a… Continue

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  Jon’s new band: Too good

  FACED with a bunch of songs that didn’t suit Shihad, Jon Toogood handpicked his favourite Kiwi musicians to start new band The Adults. Fur Patrol’s Julia Deans, Shayne Carter (Straightjacket Fits, Dimmer), Ladi 6, Anika Moa, Gary Sullivan (The Stereobus,… Continue

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  It’s those genes

  PETER Donnelly is an Australian mathematician, Professor of Statistical Science at Oxford University and the director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics. His early research focused on mathematical and statistical problems in genetics, but over time… Continue

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  Windy city poems

  TO celebrate National Poetry Day, we asked three local poets to share one of their favourite Wellington poems. Airini Beautrais finished a Master of Arts in creative writing at VUW in 2005, and published her first book Secret Heart just a year later.… Continue

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  A voice for refugees

  WELLINGTON writer Yilma Tafere Tasew has given a voice to a group seldom heard, Africa’s black refugees. His latest work, Outcast: The Plight of Black African Refugees, launched in Wellington last week, is a compilation of essays written by refugees, scholars,… Continue

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  Make a mark

  Graffiti artist Pauly Clyne (known as Pauly) has moved to Wellington for some respite from the shaking in Christchurch, and to cover our walls in paint. He’s been here three weeks, and has already noticed a big difference in how Wellingtonians respond to… Continue

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  Hip hop to the world

  THIRTY young dancers will leave Wellington for Las Vegas later this month to compete in the largest hip hop event in the world. They’ll make up the largest group of dancers ever to represent New Zealand. The two dance crews from Wellington hip hop school,… Continue

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  A better play

  WHEN Albert Belz first wrote Awhi Tapu (Sacred Embrace) in 2003 it toured the country, was nominated for best new New Zealand play at the Chapman Tripp’s, and received an award from the Human Rights Commission for its ‘positive contribution towards… Continue

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  Many ways to amuse the children

  TWO much loved children’s characters, Rumpelstiltskin and Pinocchio are visiting Wellington for the school holidays. Rumpelstiltskin will make his appearance at 4 Moncrieff Street, Mt Victoria, in KidzStuff’s Theatre’s production of the Brothers… Continue

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  Highway home

  WELLINGTON band Highway is coming home after nearly forty years. Started by bassist George Limbidis and guitarist Phil Pritchard, and later joined by drummer Jim Lawrie, ex Tom Thumb vocalist Bruce Sontgen and guitarist George Barris, Highway exploded onto the… Continue

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  To inject a little magic

  IF he weren’t an artist, Hong Kong’s Pak Sheung-Chuen might be considered mad. He’s taken a trip to Malaysia blindfolded, waited hours for a friend who didn’t know he was meant to meet Pak in the first place, and spent a month folding… Continue

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  Showcasing Kiwi furniture

  ANSWERING a business call “YOYO - Todd speaking” may sound like uncouth slang but it is instead a declaration of a store name. Mount Cook resident Todd Hayvice has opened YOYO Furniture in Thorndon Quay, showcasing furniture designed exclusively by… Continue

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  Reflection, not on our waterfront

  REGULARLY voted top sculpture in Capital Times best of Wellington polls: Solace in the wind is missing his buddy Reflection, also by Max Patte, which used to be next to the overbridge leading to Chaffers Park, near the Rowing Club on Wellington’s waterfront.… Continue

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  Foxton Fizz

  Even in a land where poppies never get a chance to grow tall, singer-songwriter Miriam Clancy could probably get away with diva behaviour. Her 2009 second album Magnetic, hit number four on the iTunes charts in its first week, and received four and five star… Continue

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  Rattle turns 20

  RECORD label Rattle may be based in Auckland, but Wellington has played a big part in its 20-year life.   Composer John Psathas recorded and released his Tui award-winning first album Rhythm Spike through Rattle, in 1999, Norman Meehan and Bill Manhire collaborated… Continue

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  Works from a new generation

  WELLINGTON audiences will get the chance to see the works of a new generation of dancers and actors when students from both the New Zealand School of Dance and the New Zealand Drama School (Toi Whakaari) perform in the city this month. For the first time the New… Continue

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  No country for old men

  AUCKLAND band The Vietnam War is harder to Google search than bands with really tricky names like !!!, Love, and The the. They didn’t really think about that at the time. “The name started as kind of a joke about music biographies – where a lot… Continue

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  Something beautiful to look at

  Art collectors and 40 of New Zealand’s leading contemporary artists have donated over 60 works to help raise funds for a new creative and performing arts centre currently under construction at Scots College in Miramar. Aloysius Teh is a parent at the school,… Continue

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  New plinth art

  THE work of Wellington artist Joanna Langford has been selected to adorn the plinths between Te Papa and Circa Theatre from February, Wellington Sculpture Trust has announced. Langford’s currently unnamed installation comprises four glass cubes, with each… Continue

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  A tissue of ice

  There’s a symmetry about Wellington artist Gabby O’Connor creating her latest work below sea level in the basement of Capital E. Entitled What Lies Beneath, O’Conner is constructing an iceberg, or more correctly the bottom of an iceberg, that… Continue

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  Clowns, but not as you know them

  THEY’RE clowning around at Bats Theatre this week. In two solo performances Wellingtonian Jenny McArthur and Finnish performer Sampo Kurppa give Wellington audiences a rare chance to see European modern clown theatre in Echolalia and Temptation opening at… Continue

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  Watchdog music

  Hikoikoi means ‘to walk’, and for Wellington band Hikoikoi, that walk’s been a long one – or as singer and guitarist Paul Wickham puts it, “quite a whack, but a good one.” The band was formed eight years ago, a six-piece reggae… Continue

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  Dancing with the elements

  THIRD year New Zealand School of Dance student Kimiora Grey can’t believe she’s been given the chance to work with some if the best this country has produced. The 20 year old is one of eight dancers in a new work from the Okareka Dance Company, Nga… Continue

• Questions on reality

  DIRECTOR Andrew Foster has taken on a project unlike any he’s ever worked on. An Oak Tree is a play for two actors, one of whom changes every night. The new actor takes to the stage having never seen or heard a word of the play they’re to perfom in.… Continue

• Double bill of light opera

  WELLINGTON G&S Light Opera continues a 57 year old tradition when it opens its double bill performance in Wellington this week, but the group says the future survival of amateur musical theatre in the capital is becoming increasingly precarious. Gillian Jerome… Continue

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  Looking at Wellington’s future

  THE future has come to Wellington with two interactive exhibitions exploring what the city might look like in 2040. The exhibition Toward 2040: Smart Green Wellington, has been set up in large shipping containers at Te Aro Park and on the waterfront by the Wharewaka.… Continue

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  More than a singer

  Ask delightful blonde bombshell Janina what she ‘does’, and you might get a moment’s hesitation. She’s just released her debut solo album The Original Ending, but she also works as a producer for Radio NZ Concert, a freelance writer for… Continue

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  The final curtain call

  After 45 years in the music business veteran crooner John Rowles is about to embark on his last tour. In a candid interview he spoke to Niels Reinsborg about his tangle with the Mafia, bullying at school, and his love of the Hawaiian sun. WHEN John Rowles… Continue

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  Take a lesson

  WELLINGTON’S bastion of tertiary-level education, Victoria University, needs to take a class in getting a point across. A letter from the university was sent out to political party representatives on campus last week, asking that, “political visits… Continue

• Best of Kiwi take on London

  LONDON is about to be invaded by the best of Kiwi with a strong Wellington flavour. Footnote Dance Company leaves this week for the City of London Festival, joining the New Zealand Trio, the New Zealand String Quartet, and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in… Continue

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  A laugh at Hamlet’s expense

  GAVIN McGibbon says his new play is about allowing people to forget about winter and just have a good laugh. The Wellington playwright takes a satirical poke at community theatre in his new play Hamlet Dies in the End, opening at Bats Theatre on June 28. His play… Continue

• Horror at the Embassy

  MOVIE goers can do the time warp again with the Embassy Theatre screening The Rocky Horror Picture Show this weekend. Ali Morris from the Embassy says it’s the one movie screening of the year where punters get to put on fancy dress, throw rice around a theatre,… Continue

• Taylor named best actor

  WELLINGTON actor Rangimoana Taylor has been named best male actor at the Wairoa Maori Film Festival. Taylor received the award for his role in Hook, Line and Sinker, a movie recently released by Wellington collective Torchlight. Taylor plays the role of P.J.,… Continue

• Book to match Capital of cool

  A book celebrating all things Wellington will be launched in the city tomorrow (June 23). The Wellington Book is a collaboration between Fitzbeck Creative directors Mike Fitzsimons and Nigel Beckford and illustrators Sandi MacKechnie and Jess Lunnon. “We’d… Continue

• Wellywood copyright

  THE regional economic development agency, Grow Wellington, has confirmed it owns the copyright for the name ‘Wellywood’. Wellington airport has been embroiled in public debate over its plans to erect a 3.5 metre high Wellywood sign on hillside land… Continue

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  Vida longa ao samba!

  Keen to get involved with Rugby World Cup celebrations, but not sure how? Why not learn to samba, and take part in Wellington’s own carnival. Dance teacher, performer, circus artist and student Clo Mudrik has been dancing the Brazilian samba since she… Continue

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  That which was lost ...

  JANE Paul has spent much of her career delving into cupboards, rummaging through sheds and peeking beneath tarpaulins under macrocarpa trees. During her 20 years at the Film Archive Paul has been involved in some of the archive’s most important projects,… Continue

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  Mountain music

  What happens when you take two Wellington musicians and translocate them to a cottage steeped in history, for six weeks of creative exploration? HOLLY Jane Ewens and Andy Hummel of local band Rosy Tin Teacaddy, spent six weeks last year sitting in the shadow… Continue

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  Dancing with  compulsion

  COMPULSIONS, obsessions and fixations are at the centre of Thricely? Precisely. A Pocket full of Pips opening at Bats Theatre tomorrow (June 16). The dance theatre production made its debut at last year’s Fringe Festival. The show returns for eight performances… Continue

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  Luncheon with the Churchills

  OAMARU playwright Paul Baker says it would be a limiting world if authors wrote only wrote about their own country. His new play Meet the Churchills, which has its world premier at Circa Theatre on Saturday (June 18), airs the secrets, faults and resentments hidden… Continue

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  What would you do?

  VICTORIA University French lecturer Keren Chiaroni discovered the best and worst of human nature when researching her book The Last of the Human Freedoms. Based on letters, journals, military records and personal accounts her book tells of three kiwi airmen downed… Continue

• Sea story

  CONGRATULATIONS to Rachel Sawaya, who won the World Wildlife Foundation Ocean:Views competition, for works of art celebrating our oceans. Sawaya’s story Paying Back the Ocean beat out visual art, music and film entries to take the grand prize. Sawaya will… Continue

• Maori writer’s residency

  MAORI writers are invited to apply for this year’s Kapiti Island Maori writer’s residency, New Zealand’s only writer’s residency by Maori for Maori. The Tau Mai e Kapiti Maori Writer’s Residency is funded by Te Waka Toi/Creative New… Continue

• A healthy sign of progress

  WELLINGTON International Airport has announced the names of the panel set up to find alternatives to the proposed Wellywood sign. Greater Wellington Regional Council chair, Fran Wilde, will head the panel of seven members. Others appointed are Wellington Employers’… Continue

• Bright sparks

  “I find the kids are often teaching me” laughs Nomi Wald, the Gifted Kids Programme teacher at Newtown School with her GKP pupils Jim Zhu (Mt Cook School), Rose Wallington (Owhiro Bay School) and Dell Todd-Johnson (Newtown School).  They are using… Continue

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  Johnson really really really really likes her

  TWENTY-two year old Phoebe Hurst was selected from 27 Wellington hopefuls keen to open for singer-songwriter Greg Johnson on his Small Towns & Ball Gowns tour. Described by Johnson as being “right in the vein of classic Wellington left field”, Hurst’s… Continue

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  Maiden Aotearoa

  Respected fibre artist, passionate advocate of Maori and Pacific artists and Te Papa event producer Suzanne Tamaki is one kick-ass wahine. Her strength was built through necessity; when the world seemed not to want her, she had to fight for a place in it. … Continue

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  Dancers flying high

  CHANGING the way we think about dance – and who can dance – is the aim of Triple Bill, a dance-theatre show performed by dancers with and without disabilities. Eight dancers from the Auckland based Touch Compass dance company have teamed together with… Continue

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  Americana, Aotearoa-style

  YOU probably know Auckland-based band The DeSotos better than you realise –their songs were the themes for TVNZ series’ North and South, hosted by Marcus Lush, and many more of their tracks were littered throughout the programmes. Those of a certain… Continue

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  What if we lose?

  LET’S hope a play about New Zealand’s defeat at the 1995 Rugby World Cup isn’t an omen of things to come. Downstage Theatre’s production of Roger Hall’s one man show C’mon Black opens this week but producer, Dave Armstrong,… Continue

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  Time travel on strings

  LISTENING to the Brentano String Quartet is a bit like time travel. The New York ensemble will perform music from the past 500 years, from the 16th century to the 21st, when they play in the Wellington Town Hall on Sunday (June 12). Since forming in 1992 the… Continue

• Wellywood, or won’t they?

  WELLINGTON International Airport seems determined to erect its controversial Wellywood sign on the hills above Miramar despite a request from Wellington City Council to reconsider the sign. The council passed a motion last week asking the airport to reconsider… Continue

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  Local boy done good

  Nineteen-year-old Jesse Sheehan is on the fast track to becoming the next big Kiwi music success. But how’d the singer songwriter the with the trademark ginger ‘fro get to be so good that major record labels are fighting to sign him to their books?… Continue

• Books for the win

  LOCAL writer Kate Camp is the recipient of this year’s Creative New Zealand $60,000 Berlin Writers’ Residency. Camp, who will collaborate with locals and complete a collection of poetry in Berlin, is also a finalist for the New Zealand Post book awards,… Continue

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  Keeping Shakespeare relevant

  STUDENTS from schools as far away as Mount Cook, Rotorua and the West Coast arrive in Wellington this week for the Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand (SGCNZ) National University of Otago Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival. Those selected will soak up Wellington’s… Continue

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  Private works go public

  THE doors are about to open on art works normally found hanging in the homes of Wellingtonians. Behind Closed Doors, a new exhibition opening this week at Victoria University’s Adam Art Gallery, features works drawn exclusively from private collections in… Continue

• “Looks so lame”

  Opposition is growing to a sculpture commemorating the life of Katherine Mansfield, Wellington’s most famous literary figure. The work has been commissioned by the Wellington Sculpture Trust. The three metre high stainless steel  work, (above) by Auckland… Continue

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  When at first you don’t succeed

  It has all the makings of a Hollywood film – a dashing protagonist on a grand adventure, becomes embroiled in a tragic love story. As his dreams collapse, our hero is forced to face his demons, before beginning the slow, uphill journey of a life rebuilt.… Continue

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  Blooming baby boomer

  JANE Keller is shocked at being perilously close to 60. It’s not that she feels older. Rather she wonders how the years have passed so quickly. But Keller says being a baby boomer is something to celebrate and in her one woman show Boomers Behaving Badly,… Continue

• NZ Music Month: Bronwyn Kelly

  BORN in the “illustrious town” of Tapanui, north of Gore, Bronwyn Kelly moved to Wellington with her family when she was 10.  After polytech and time overseas nannying, Kelly found herself on the, “slippery slope into the caffeine-driven… Continue

• This week, in music…

  New Zealand Music Month 2011 is in its last week, but there are still lots of great gigs going on. Capital Times highlights some top picks. A WISE man once said, “The more talented someone is, the nicer they are”, and it’s often true - we… Continue

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  Berlin is the new black

  Ladi 6 has just gone. Electric Wire Hustle, Hollie Smith and Lisa Tomlins are going.  An Emerald City has been there for years; young street artist Carmel Levy arrived in April and Lloyd Jones wrote his last novel after a year there. Melody Thomas looks… Continue

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  Stravinsky’s legacy

  THE great composer Igor Stravinsky was conducting the orchestra’s rehearsal for Petrouchka when Russell Kerr sneaked into the back stalls of the empty theatre to listen. IT was 1955 and Kerr was touring the United States as a dancer in the London Festival… Continue

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  Mean Maori mean

  There are so many talented wahine performing at Pao Pao Pao, we’re tempted to nickname it “peow, peow.”   The popular Bro’Town phrase, however, only carries sexy connotations, and we’re referring to the bigger picture.… Continue

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  Prize book

  A book by a Wellington author about New Zealand’s rarest parrot, the kakapo, has won the Royal Society of New Zealand’s 2011 science book prize. Kakapo - Rescued from the Brink of Extinction by broadcaster and zoologist Alison Ballance tells the story… Continue

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  Freaky Friday

  MENTALIST Robert Haley was too spooked to continue with his second Séance show last week. The shows were meant to run on Friday the 13th at a ‘secret haunted location’, but when punters turned up at 9:30 a shaky Haley told them the show was cancelled,… Continue

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  Opera in the house

  CITIZENS who don’t like going to the theatre have it made this week. With Silo Theatre’s production of Did I Believe it? on at Foxglove bar, and Revolver circus at Estadio, you won’t have to go anywhere near a theatre for a theatrical experience.… Continue

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  Performance meets play

  Tom Beauchamp is learning how to crack whips while tap dancing, for his latest show, Revolver. “AS far as I know it’s a world premier. I’ve been cracking whips for a while and I did some basic tap about ten years ago, but I’m not naturally… Continue

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  Return seasons

  TWO award winning New Zealand plays are back on the Wellington stage this week.   Downstage Theatre’s production of Death and the Dreamlife of Elephants, and Circa Theatre’s The Lead Wait both open on Friday and, both were originally commissioned… Continue

• Support for historical arts

  HISTORICAL music, dance and theatre in New Zealand will now be supported and encouraged by a new charitable trust. The Historical Arts Trust aims to educate and inspire young people and create new opportunities for enthusiasts and professionals.  Executive… Continue

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  NZ Music Month: Oh my Gosia

  GOSIA Piatek is a Hutt Girl at heart (“Oooooo yeah!”), but she was born in Poland and moved to New Zealand with her family, seeking political asylum, when she was seven. She’s since grown up and formed her own company, Kowtow Clothing. Selling… Continue

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  A new hook for the movies

  MADE on the smell of an oily rag, a new Wellington movie about a truck driver is made on what Stalin would have you believe was the old Communist system… all the cast made an equal contribution to its production. Directors Andrea Bosshard and Shane… Continue

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  Groovy and the beast

  LOCAL four-piece metal band Beastwars is hard-core, in a groovy kind of way. Drummer Nathan Hickey, aka Nato, formed the band five years ago, and this was his intention. “We wanted to sound like The Cult crossed with Kyuss, you know - good grooves, and… Continue

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  Lloyd Webber’s lead lady

  KIWI singer Delia Hannah is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s leading lady, selected to perform in The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber now touring NZ after Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Delia, who recently completed the Australian and Asian tours of Cats, playing… Continue

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  Petone gallery to close

  PETONE’S Williams Gallery, specialising in contemporary New Zealand and Pacific art, is to close next month. After ten years operating the seven days a week business owners Lorraine and Patrick Williams have decided it’s time to close. They’ve… Continue

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  Going viral

  When it comes to YouTube, you never know what’s going to make it big, or ‘viral’, and what will sink into oblivion. On this new stage, which has the ability to create superstars overnight, local boy Matt Mulholland is one of New Zealand’s… Continue

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  This is your final boarding call

  For nearly ten years, The Aviators have delivered catchy hooks, grooves and horn lines to funk-hungry ears around the country. The band are about to call it quits, but not before serving up one last morsel, The Ballad of Sour Jayne, a spicier and more surprising… Continue

• Sweet adelines

  BARBERSHOP harmony will fill the streets of Wellington this weekend with hundreds of women from around the country gathering in the city for the New Zealand Sweet Adelines competition and convention. Four hundred women representing 19 quartets and eight choruses… Continue

• Going solo

  STEVE Wrigley has performed Kevin: The Musical before, but the Auckland Comedy Festival season was really just a dress rehearsal for Wellington. Wrigley’s always wanted to do a solo show at Bats, ever since he first got into comedy doing gigs at the San… Continue

• Barly Theatrical

  IT’S theatre for those who’d sooner go to the pub. Foxglove bar customers are in for something of a surprise when their watering hole hosts Auckland’s Silo theatre which is actively bringing theatre to the people. A downtown bar might seem… Continue

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  Up the wrong tree

  AMERICAN comedian Arj Barker, known best in New Zealand as dispassionate New Yorker Dave on Flight of the Conchords, has mixed feelings about his last Wellington show.   “Some shows you just stay on track and do the jokes, then there are others where… Continue

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  All over the joint

  Australian roots and jam band John Butler Trio was formed in 1998, and they’ve got big. Three of their five studio albums have hit number one in Australian charts, and anyone who’s seen them live raves about their musicianship and energy. Melody Thomas… Continue

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  You’re not in Timaru, now boy

  You’d think performing to massive crowds for laughs would be hard enough, but not for Dunedin-born comedian Sam Wills. In his latest routine, as The Boy with Tape on His Face, Wills performs on stage for up to an hour without talking at all. And audiences… Continue

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  Sheilah wins

  FORTY-two groups from 20 schools around Wellington competed for a spot at the University of Otago Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival nationals last week. One 15-minute and one five-minute long scene are selected in each region to progress to the national competition,… Continue

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  Everyone loves a happy ending

  INDIA is the world’s largest producer of film, and with more than 1000 feature-length releases annually, Bollywood films are a major factor in why. Now, the colour, movement and feel-good storylines have been translated for the stage.   Akshita Nama… Continue

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  Burlesque, uncovered

  GRACE Hammersley-Myers is a PA at The New Zealand Treasury. But at night, she dons thigh-high fishnets, lace bustiers and frilly-bottomed knickers to become Busty la Belle – New Zealand’s reigning burlesque queen. Modern/neo-burlesque performance… Continue

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  Record stores give you a better life

  IT’S ironic, that while Wellington’s favourite record store Real Groovy was making the announcement it would soon close up shop, others were preparing for International record store day. Despite news of Real Groovy’s imminent closing, the store… Continue

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  Musicians call for jury trial

  WELLINGTON musicians are rallying support for 15 people arrested in the 2007 Urewera ‘terror raids’, who will now be tried by judge-alone, at the High Court in Auckland on May 30. Charges made under the Terrorist Supression Act were dropped in 2007,… Continue

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  Strange nesting places

  HOW come a 46-year old Newtown librarian, born and raised in New Zealand and with little filmmaking experience, is flying to Iraq to make a documentary on Assyrian people and their culture? It comes down to curiosity, compassion and the desire to tell a good… Continue

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  Home is where the heart is

  ELIZABETH Marvelly is singing for joy at being home. The 21 year old songstress joins the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra to open her Home Tour, in Wellington next Wednesday night. Marvelly returns to New Zealand after three years international touring, performing… Continue

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  “Have-a-go-mate” spirit alive at design school

  Industrial designer, Mark Pennington, is a former student, tutor and head of the Wellington Polytechnic School of Design. He has had a long career in industrial design in New Zealand and has worked as a consultant to many of the leading design companies in the… Continue

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  Accessorise me

  THIS season it’s all about accessories - scarves, stockings, chunky jewellery, winter boots, hats… the list goes on. Don’t be afraid to wrap that chunky necklace over a delicate merino top either. This season is all about glamorous accessories… Continue

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  Long range composition

  A ‘pyramid scheme’ is a fraudulent moneymaking venture, which eventually collapses, leaving those at the bottom with nothing. Wellington band The Pyramid Scheme have been engaging in unsustainable practices of their own, but thankfully those on the… Continue

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  Groovy sales a gift to shoppers

  IF the mob last Sunday at Real Groovy’s closing sale are anything to go by many people will miss the record store.  And the Courtenay Place crowd will miss Bennetts Gift World. Combined, Real Groovy records on Cuba Street and Bennetts Gift World on… Continue

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  Good vibrations

  EVAN Dumbleton is an award-winning engineer by trade and a musician by choice, but after winning awards in both areas his musical talents may become more than just a hobby. LAST week, Seatoun based mechanical engineer Evan Dumbleton was awarded the Institution… Continue

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  You’ve got to make peace

  FRONTPERSON for the band Minuit (Min-wee), Ruth Carr, has just released her first book, I felt like a fight, alright? The book is an assortment of song snippets, poems, musings and doodles, although she’s not sure about being called an author. “That’s… Continue

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  To the left, to the left

  STARTING this weekend, Radio Active will be found four steps down the frequency band. In a move dictated by the Government, its transmission will shift to allow for greater space between stations. Of approximately 250 radio frequencies nationwide that were made… Continue

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  Seems like yesterday...

  CIRCA Theatre was born at a dinner party in Miramar. A group of actors bemoaning the state of Wellington theatre decided it was time to start a second professional theatre in the city. “We wanted to make a space for artists,” founding Circa member,… Continue

• Western clan comes to Capital

  CIRCA celebrates 35 years by bringing to Wellington the award-winning American play August: Osage County. Set during the sweltering late-summer heat of rural Oklahoma, Tracy Letts’ play exposes the dark side of the Western clan, an American Midwestern family… Continue

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  In Spite of it all

  TIM Spite was meant to write a play about tagging. Instead, his latest show, The Spy Who Wouldn’t Die Again, is a spoof on an old classic. “[The show] sprang out of necessity. Last year we wrote a show called The December Brother, which was partly… Continue

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  Tu meke music

  What happens when you take four leading  musicians and put them in a studio with no restraints, timelines or goals? If those musicians are Warren Maxwell, Rick Cranson, and Tom and Joe Callwood – the answer is sonic splendour. Melody Thomas talks with… Continue

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  Good for something

  COMPOSER John Psathas is onto something good. He has written his first ‘pavlova Western’ film score for Good For Nothing – a Kiwi style American Western film which is receiving rave reviews in the US. FOR JOHN Psathas, who shot to media fame… Continue

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  Earle in town

  JUSTIN Townes Earle may have famous rock country singer Steve Earle for a father but he can sure hold his end up. And the stage, for hours, when he performs. Last time Earle hit Wellington, almost two years ago, he captivated a crammed Bodega crowd with his brand… Continue

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  Keeping it in the family

  Sigismund Owen Keoghan was a joiner working in the West Coast mines in the late 1800s. His calloused hands built the wooden troughs that transported coal after excavation, but they were also used for a more gentle purpose – playing his violin. 130 years… Continue

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  Wonderful WOMAD

  WOMAD brings New Zealanders flocking to New Plymouth for the best showcase of world music treats, workshops, films and cooking demonstrations in all the land. For the ‘artist in conversation’ programme, artists talk about the musical journey that led… Continue

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  A prize in their eyes

  LOCAL musicians Thomas Oliver and Darren Watson are both finalists for the blues section of the 2010 International Songwriting Competition. Oliver’s Goin’ Home and Watson’s Love is an Ocean have put them in the running for $3,000 in prizes should… Continue

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  Invers logic

  Take 70 film crew, mostly under the age of 30, and tell them they’re going to spend nearly a month with no cellphone reception, drinking bad coffee, probably in the rain. What you’d expect is a mutiny; but what filmmaker Rob Sarkies got was an extension… Continue

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  Writer’s war effort

  WRITER Harry Ricketts spent eight years researching some of the finest war poets and their encounters in order to write his latest book Strange Meetings: Poets of the Great War. After some false starts and difficulty with direction, a friend introduced Ricketts… Continue

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  Take me to the river

  PHOTOGRAPHER John Williams has spent years documenting religious events. At Pataka Museum, in Porirua, black and white photographs from his 2007 trip to the ardh mela (religious festival) in India fill entire walls – some six metres long. Despite Williams… Continue

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  In a democratic fashion

  FASHION designer Trelise Cooper is known for colour, ruffles and her curly blonde hair but the internationally renowned designer has much more to her. Cooper begins each day at her Auckland-based workroom with a staff meditation session. She adopted the idea from… Continue

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  Purrrrfect harmony

  THE voice is the same, but Anna Coddington’s new album Cat & Bird is a different beast than her last one. Coddington’s first full-length album The Lake, released in 2008, was an exercise in soul-baring. “Songwriting [for The Lake] felt like working from the… Continue

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  A boy’s show

  AMERICAN Director Ronald Nelson has traded politics for theatre. The former “lowest elected official on Capitol Hill” has written, and now directs, Mates and Lovers which is on at Downstage till March 12. “I was working on September 11,” says Nelson. “And I could… Continue

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  Kia Kaha Christchurch

  WHEN two music students at the immersion Maori language school Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Nga Mokopuna in Seatoun heard about the Christchurch earthquake, they wrote a song to offer some comfort to Cantabrians. Te Awhina Kaiwai-Wanikau, 15, and Manarangi Mua, 16,… Continue

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  Opera in the pink

  SOPRANO Tiffany Speight describes herself as a “Mozart-looking Barbie” in her latest NBR NZ Opera role as Romilda. Speight can relate to her on-stage character - a strong, loyal yet cheeky woman. “Romilda’s one of those characters. Someone said to me ‘she’s like… Continue

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  Is this it?

  KENNY Wizz is one of thousands of international Michael Jackson impersonators. He’s also one of the best, although he won’t say that himself. “I never try to better myself against others, I just want to present a great production,” he says. The production,… Continue

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  It’s a journey in clothes

  FASHION meets music and a whole lot of crazy hairdos at Le Voyage on Queens Wharf this Thursday night. Fashion show organiser and Haight Ashbury salon coordinator Catherine Hunt talks a mile a minute in a smooth English accent about her latest fashion feat. “I… Continue

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  Fringe chop

  COMEDY: Battle of Wits: Improvised stories, songs and sagas, The Fringe Bar, 7pm, March 6, 13. How’s Wife: Life after marriage, The Fringe Bar, 6.30pm, March 2-5. DANCE: Future Astronauts: Society, manipulation, control, power, Bats Theatre,… Continue

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  Dyslexics, untie!

  NOT many artists would refer to themselves as “blessed with the gift of dyslexia”, but Wellington-based “poetic philosopher” Bohemian Thought does. “It took me awhile to accept it, and for a long time I tried to hide from it. But I have to own it; I have to accept… Continue

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  Best of the bunch

  HOMEGROWN sees 16,500 people gather on Wellington’s waterfront to watch 45 bands from around the country. Joining many of New Zealand’s most celebrated contemporary groups is Auckland band The Earlybirds – winners of this year’s band search, who took home a… Continue

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  From Berlin with psychedelia

  BERLIN-based NZ band, An Emerald City, have moved from recording in a decrepit Berlin communist building in the snow to a paddock with cicadas chirping in the background. Their 25-date NZ tour kicked off on February 17 in Raglan, with a gig at Wellington’s San… Continue

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  Musical love affair

  MUSICAL duo Elizabeth Judd and Emile de la Rey’s musical journey in Contrite Elegant Rebel mirrors their own love affair. After a chance meeting in Hamilton in 2000, when de la Rey dossed at her flat, the pair started writing music together. Then, Judd decided… Continue

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  Juggling The idea of America

  WHEN motherhood dictated that actor Michelle Hine would need to reorganise her priorities, she put her children at the top. Eventually. “I had my first child in Wellington and filmed the series Away Laughing with a baby on set. There were actually a lot of babies… Continue

• Decent palate cleanser

  ALL over the world volunteer organisations like the Wellington Film Society keep the flame of film art alive so that cinephiliacs like me can get a decent palate cleanser every Monday night after a weekend of Hollywood tosh. I can’t recommend Society membership… Continue

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  Capital culture

  CAPITAL E National Arts Festival gets creative. A giant, eight-metre-long, blow-up whale named Manilayo made out of recycled parachutes and a wetsuit, characters from an eccentric chess board that come to life, and a story of a boat made out of bread caught in… Continue

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  Strange furnishings at the Dowse

  A SNEEZING computer, a giant nose, an inflatable finger which deflates as you approach it, a subwoofer fart and something stuck in a locker that obviously wants to get out; artist Sean Kerr certainly has a sense of humour. Why a farting subwoofer? “Humour helps… Continue

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  Festival first

  NEWTOWN musician, Imogen Holmstead-Scott, finally gets the chance to play on the main stage at this year’s Newtown Festival after years of dreaming about it. “I’ve always performed on the community stage, so this year’s a first for me,” she says. Newtown resident… Continue

• What’s the good of art?

  IT’S true – the arts benefit the Wellington economy. A new survey by Arts Wellington, which represents 40 arts groups in the capital, was conducted amongst its members to establish the economic benefit of arts organisations. The results are out. “The survey provides… Continue

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  A moving play

  WELLINGTON writer Jo Randerson knows that catching up with friends from your youth has the potential to be awkward. “Quite often your interests have changed since you were five,” she laughs. Thankfully, when she met up with fellow Clifton Terrace School classmate… Continue

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  Cruise control

  THERE are hundreds of reasons to start a band, but Tim O’Brien’s bluegrass band Two Oceans Trio has the best one.  “We formed just so we could go to New Zealand. [Guitarist] Gerry Paul asked if I wanted to do a tour there and I said ‘ah, yeah!’ Then Trevor… Continue

• What a show pony

  RENE Gasser is a sixth generation horseman, and the proud owner of 28 stallions. Melody Thomas talks with Gasser about the perils and payoffs of working exclusively with the most dominating of horses.  Forget mares and geldings, for Rene Gasser owning… Continue

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  Fringe Fest

  THE New Zealand Fringe Festival should get one of those odd keys that people get in those coming of age rites. It launches its 21st season on February 18. Traditionally, turning 21 means that you are considered old enough to be a key holder to your family home,… Continue

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  Quarantine continues

  HOP on the ferry to Somes Island and find yourself captive in quarantine. And if you couldn’t get a ticket to one of the original seven shows, you may have another chance. Four more shows were announced last Thursday, extending the season into March. Quarantine… Continue

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  Fuse at Frank Kitts

  CAMPGROUND Chaos transforms the circus ring into a multi-sport, adventure playground. The Fuse Circus open-air performance, inspired by an iconic Kiwi holiday pastime, mixes juggling, acrobatics and swinging. Summer holiday at camping grounds are already a circus:… Continue

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  Shoot your own

  GLEN Ahearn has been keyboardist for The Pink Floyd Experience since its inception 13 years ago. The variety of Pink Floyd’s music means Ahearn doesn’t get bored playing it.   “Every two years it’s a different show. No two shows have ever been the same, because… Continue

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  Seven poets in the city

  POET and anthologist Jenny Bornholdt has her own writing shed in her back lawn. At this time of the year it’s a good thing. Bornholdt has an “offensive” cold, and her manuscript The Hill of Wool to finish. “You feel separate in the shed. I love Hataitai and working… Continue

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  NZSO welcomes wind

  PHILHARMONIA oboist Gordon Hunt sounds equally excited about brown trout as he does Richard Strauss. He talks to Janina Nicoll about fly fishing, conducting the NZSO and the oboe. GORDON Hunt, a “three-quarters Kiwi” has come back to NZ every January for… Continue

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  Artist to superhero

  Don’t scoff when Claire Prebble tells you her next goal is to design clothes for Lady Gaga; there’s a pretty good chance she’ll do exactly that.  THE 25 year-old artist started life in Golden Bay, Takaka. She first entered the World of WearableArt… Continue

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  Aromatic art

  PERSONAL style is not only exhibited in fashion, but also in the choice of flowers you pick for your loved one this Valentine’s Day. So, guys don’t get her droopy pink carnations from the local BP if she likes to shop at Karen Walker. And girls, don’t be scared… Continue

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  Hip clothes, hot beats

  NEW Clothes for the New Year opens the final weekend of Chinese New Year celebrations, featuring local talent and an internationally famous dance crew ReQuest. In the high fashion, urban dance show, Wellington designers and performers will take the stage. Wellington… Continue

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  Approximate love

  “OUT of sight, out of mind”: In the history of long distance relationships, this has been a much-used maxim. But advances in technology mean this isn’t necessarily the case anymore. Spanish-New Zealand theatre collaboration Love You Approximately explores the… Continue

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  Old style, new ideas

  WALKING into The Dowse Art Museum’s Blumhardt Gallery you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d stepped back in time to late 18th-century France. Ornate and sumptuously glazed ceramic pieces are scattered throughout; everything from large, colourful vessels shaped… Continue

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  Summer's tale

  THIS year’s Summer Shakespeare director Lori Leigh was meant to go home to the USA next August - when her doctoral research scholarship is complete. “No, I’m staying. I’ve completely fallen in love with New Zealand. My entire life has shifted here and it’s become… Continue

• Loopy layers

  MUSICIAN Adam Page and composer John Psathas had ten days to put together a 40-minute piece The Harvest Suite. The result will be performed live by Page at Downstage on February 13. Psathas, known for composing music for the opening and closing ceremonies at the… Continue

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  Academic purgatory

  NAUGHTY students have always been sent to the detention room – but where do naughty teachers go? To the rubber room. A ‘rubber room’, or reassignment centre as it’s officially called, is a place where New York teachers await disciplinary hearings - spending days,… Continue

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  Caution: sculptors at work

  ARTISTS are chiselling away making sculptures made of out iconic New Zealand Oamaru stone for the next two weeks. The Soft as Stone Sculpture Trust are hosting their biannual symposium, which started last Saturday. The creamy-coloured Oamaru limestone, quarried… Continue

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  A dollar for your soul

  CALIFORNIAN singer Aloe Blacc wraps modern tales in a classic package. His latest album Good Things tells stories of economic hardship, corrupt politics and the struggle to survive, in a voice like Marvin Gaye or Donny Hathaway. “My goal is to honor my teachers… Continue

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  Make the most of the coast

  IF Island Bay Festival seems especially magical this year, it may be because a fairy is running it. Festival director Katrina Baylis is better known among toddlers and their parents as ‘Fairy Trina’, a much-celebrated guest at any children’s birthday party. The… Continue

• Brooke flows sweetly

  DON’T believe everything you read about Brooke Fraser. Despite some news reports, the Sydney-based singer and songwriter did not have a Wikipedia-invented stalker, her husband is not a full-time musician, but she is married, and Fraser admits her husband Scott… Continue

• Police fingerprint Museum staff

  POLICE expert Julian Atkins was called in to fingerprint Museum of Wellington City and Sea Director Brett Mason on Friday. But his prints were not taken for a recently committed crime, more so for an historic crime, committed in Wellington in 1905. Mason’s… Continue

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  About face on PACE

  THE Ministry of Social Development denies reports that PACE, which stands for Pathways to Arts and Cultural Employment and is commonly referred to as ‘the artists’ benefit’, might end in Wellington. “In March 2011, Work and Income intends to seek expressions… Continue

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  Ring in the rabbit

  XIN Nian Kuai Le, Hui Ling Dun! - Happy New Year, Wellington! This week, Chinese New Year’s tenth year of celebration kicks off, with a fortnight full of festivities. Playing a vital role as a lion in the street parade on February 13 is four-year-old Ximing Dong… Continue

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  Deva's back

  DEVA Mahal doesn’t call any one place home, but there’s a big space in her heart reserved for Wellington. “It’s wonderful coming back, I feel I can breathe again. In the aeroplane on the way back I was looking up at the sky and I could feel the weight lifting… Continue

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  Rhythm in the air

  BOTH Fungisai Foto and Sam Manzanza become hyper-animated when you talk about music, especially if you ask how Africans feel about it. “Music is our life. We breathe it. We eat it,” says Foto. “People look at Africa and think, ‘how can they survive like this?’… Continue

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  Art in the car park

  ARTIST and musician Campbell Neale is helping Adam Art Gallery make art in a car park. This Thursday, February 3, Neale will create a live, improvised performance - part of Adam Art Gallery’s The Commons Project. “This project looks at public and common spaces,… Continue

• Rock 'n' roll in a classical way

  TENOR Will Martin picked a singing career over rugby. It paid off. MARTIN is the youngest tenor ever to debut at number one in the UK Classics Charts with his 2007 debut album A New World. He’s gone from performing on cruise ships and the Hard Rock Café… Continue

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  Get a move on

  DANCERS from around the world have gathered on Cuba Street for Choreolab 2011; an event devised by Deirdre Tarrant, director of Footnote Dance and Tarrant studios. Carefully selected dancers have two weeks to experiment, network, and study alongside masterclass… Continue

• No love in the air

  MUSIC festival One Love, held in celebration of Bob Marley’s birthday on Waitangi Day, has been cancelled for the first time in 13 years. Dave Gibbons, who jokes he’s been station manager at Active for “far too long”, says times are hard for small business. “I… Continue

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  No booze for Pinky

  THE holiday season is over, along with boozy lunches by the beach, and, if the Alcohol Reform Bill is passed, cheap alcohol will disappear too. A Law Commission review of alcohol use has prompted Downtown Community Ministry (DCM) to launch a campaign for submissions… Continue

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  Being Neil Pardington

  Photographer Neil Pardington could be mistaken for a better-looking John Malkovich. The director/producer/designer/writer has just had a full-body massage, and a baby girl. His calm, artistic air evokes that Malkovichian charm, which settles itself like dew on… Continue

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  Last week of magic

  GARDENS magic is almost over for 2011, with just under a week’s musical entertainment left to go. Jessie Moss and James Coyle combine to form folk-rock outfit Jessie James and the Outlaws, joined too by members of bands like Hikoikoi, Fly My Pretties, Spartacus… Continue

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  Chinese violinist  brings in the New Year

  CHINESE New Year will be marked by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra this year when Chinese violinist Tianwa Yang performs in Postcards from Exotic Places – a Chinese New Year. Yang, since she was 11, has been startling people all round the world with her remarkable… Continue

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  Heat is on

  A WELLINGTON theatre production is the first to be powered completely off the grid. Heat, written by Lynda Chanwai-Earle, tells the story of scientist lovers wintering over in Antarctica. Chanwai-Earle wanted to emulate conditions in Antarctica for her play,… Continue

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  Top Taranaki tart

  Artist Dale Copeland thinks living in Taranaki lends itself to creativity. “I joke that it’s something in the water but it’s just a good place to live. You can give yourself the freedom to play, the time to make things and to create,” she says. The topography… Continue

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  Worth a kiss

  WHO ever said men can’t multitask? Tim Harrington, frontman of New York band Les Savy Fav, can kiss multiple audience members, swagger round drinking wine straight from the bottle, and change costume onstage, while leading his band to the frenetic and contagious… Continue

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  Ladyhawke leads the way

  PIP Brown is back in town – this time, to perform. St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival will showcase the internationally renowned pop songstress Ladyhawke, originally from Masterton, but whom Wellington strongly claims as our own, at the alternative music festival on… Continue

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  Home again

  AROUND 50,000 highly-charged fans will hear Shihad, one of three Wellington bands playing the Big Day Out on January 21. Also there will be happy rapper Tommy Ill and Flying Nun darling Grayson Gilmour. Front-man Jon Toogood welcomed himself home to NZ with some… Continue

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  Extra, Extra! Read all about it

  Melody Thomas was asked if she wanted to be an unpaid extra in Wellington musician Barnaby Weir’s new solo video. What? Not paid to hang out with great people in costume, drink free beer and listen to good local music? It was a tough choice but in the interests… Continue

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  Island Christmas

  MUSICIAN, composer, performer and teacher, Jhan Lindsay, moved to Wellington from Dairy Flat, her rural home just north of Auckland, at 17. She studied saxophone at The Conservatorium of Music, now The New Zealand School of Music, eventually changing her major… Continue

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  A pakeha marae

  CIRCA Theatre’s first play for 2011, The Motor Camp, is also a first for the world. Written by Kiwi Dave Armstrong, the play is based on a 1980s story idea by director and best friend Danny Mulheron. It is a verbal jigsaw puzzle of “pretty much everything Dave’s… Continue

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  All the world’s a stage

  WHAT would you do with a complete stranger, a bunch of small figurines and a little eyedropper bottle of fluid that looks suspiciously like blood? Well you wouldn’t need to worry about what to do, because the headphones you’d be wearing at the Matterhorn in Downstage’s… Continue

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  Celebrate the festival season

  A high music festival-to-population ratio in New Zealand means there’s New Year’s entertainment to suit all tastes. Capital Times looks at four of the biggest festivals for 2010. IF you’re about to partake in the annual migration to the New Year festivals… Continue

• Let them play!

  WELLINGTON percussionist Andreas Lepper is the kind of man you wish was your grandfather. He has a fabulously dry sense of humour made better by his thick German accent and he’s very, very funky. Lepper’s been a part of many of our greatest bands since he moved… Continue

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  Hip hopping home

  KING Kapisi may look tough, but the hip hop rapper, scratcher, and all-round musician can sing like an angel. “I’ve always got my serious look but I’m a smiley guy,” he says. “I’m very passionate about what I do and have to tour internationally so you have to… Continue

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  Artists told to try again

  CREATIVE New Zealand has told six Wellington-based arts organisations to “have another shot” at getting into the new Arts Leadership Investment programme. Downstage Theatre, Footnote Dance, Vector Wellington Orchestra, Arts Access Aotearoa, Choirs Aotearoa New… Continue

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  Motocade, merriment and meat

  EDEN Mulholland, guitarist and vocalist for Motocade, the “emotive without being heavy” Auckland band, used to be a professional dancer. His wife Erin is still a dancer, and a butcher. Mulholland wouldn’t mind learning the butchery trade as well. “I go down… Continue

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  We’re off to see the wizard

  YOU could say Deirdre Tarrant’s dancers are well into character for her dance studio’s annual production. So much so that Tarrant calls her dancers Dorothy, The Tin Man, The Scarecrow, and so on, even when they aren’t in costume. Dorothy is played by Sophia… Continue

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  They! Love! Us!

  Dunedin punk/noise/pop band Die! Die! Die! might be from the south, but they do love our city. Guitarist and vocalist Andrew Wilson interviewed drummer Michael Prain on the subject. You have been quite vocal about Wellington being your favourite place to… Continue

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  This is more fun

  IF the $85 ticket price for the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards is pushing it on a Christmas-time budget, perhaps the Chapman Kips is more your thing. Both the awards celebrate practitioners of theatre, they are both on at the same time of year and their names sound… Continue

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  She’s a modern soul

  SHARON Jones – a former prison guard who’s on her way to sing in Wellington – has more relevance today than soul legends Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight & The Pips, says the founder of Rip It Up magazine, Murray Cammick. Cammick founded rip it up 30 years… Continue

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  Go get ‘em, tiger!

  WELLINGTON lawyer and band manager James Mason has won a three-month contract working with the organisers of Gisborne music festival Rhythm and Vines, and he is “pumped”. “I’m really excited, although it’s bittersweet. The other guys [in the competition] are… Continue

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  Singing it in style

  MIRAMAR South School doesn’t do a school fair, instead the choir sings. The vocally strong choir sung their hearts out during lunchtime on Lambton Quay and Manners Mall last week, and business people stopped in their tracks to look and listen and enjoy the big… Continue

• Chapman Tripp results

  Critics Wild Card: End Game - Kenny King and Rebekah Sherrat Brancott Estate Award for Most Original Production of the Year: The Arrival - Red Leap Theatre Company Downstage Theatre Award for the Most Promising Male Newcomer of the Year: Paul Waggott – Dog… Continue

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  It’s just a jump to the left

  When asked whether Juan Jackson – who plays womaniser, murderer and mad scientist Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show – is like his character in real life, he replies: “I am a bisexual mad scientist”. He concedes that he’s not, but “there’s much more to Frank-N-Furter… Continue

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  The intricate art of writing

  Bruce Mason Playwriting Award finalist Eli Kent is so cool you almost don’t want to like him. It’s like not wanting to admit you read The Da Vinci Code or that you liked Eat, Pray, Love (the book) – it’s just not as much fun liking something that everyone else… Continue

• Opera in the trees

  OPERA is again heading to Rhona Frasers’ Days Bay garden to capitalise on the natural acoustics of the place. Rossini’s The Journey to Rheims, based on the coronation of Charles X, is reinvigorated in Andrew Porter’s English translation of the story. The opera… Continue

• Arty inception

  WELLINGTON artists are going all potty. Ceramics and handmade crafts are featuring strongly at the Christmas cash and carry show at The New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts. “Appreciation for craft-based works has emerged over the past year. People are starting… Continue

• Memories of  last century

  People who’d flocked to Te Papa on a recent sunny Sunday were going bonkers over its exhibition Slice of Heaven, which brought back memories for people of all ages. It features glass cases of memorabilia from our country’s past. It’s real New Zealand stuff. From… Continue

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  Fantasy artists

  The days when the realms of science fiction and fantasy illustration were just for geeks and social escapists are fast passing us by. Following the global popularity of The Lord of the Rings and the associated Weta, something that was once an ostracised pastime… Continue

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  When in doubt, sing

  Bryan Crump is best known as the friendly and inquisitive nighttime host on Radio New Zealand National. He’s also musical director and performer in local choral group Doubtful Sounds, although he likes to put it Frank Zappa once did; the songs are “produced,… Continue

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  Moa music, please

  There’s a pair of very talented songwriters heading our way, one outrageous and hilarious, one sweet and grounded. What they have in common is that they are unashamedly themselves, unwilling to bend to suit others. Lucky us. ANIKA Moa has her face and name… Continue

• Beam me international

  There’ll be no excuses now for our diplomats abroad not to know and promote New Zealand films.   The Government’s Cultural Diplomacy Programme has a long list of long and short films  available in its “The Film Showcase” catalogue which will be managed… Continue

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  Heartbeat

  Psychologists have found that the majority of our clearest and most vivid memories come from the period between adolescence and young adulthood, a time they call our “reminiscence bump”. Retired lawyer Doug Webb’s reminiscence bump features many memories of Miramar,… Continue

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  The redhead is back

  JULIA Deans, better known for fronting Fur Patrol, is a dag. On the phone to Capital Times she asks for a minute. Then in the background a man (John Toogood, Shihad’s frontman) says: I want to tell you about it.” Deans laughs. “You can’t tell me about penis… Continue

• Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards 2010 nominations are:

  THE theatre world is awaiting the standout plays of the year. Winners are to be announced at The Opera House on December 5. Brancott Award for Most Original Production of the Year: 360 – A Nightsong Productions and Theatre Stampede collaboration, The Arrival… Continue

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  Put a ring around it

  KARL Fritsch’s jewellery is unlike any other. “Good,” says Fritsch, “I would have to stop making it if you said you’d seen it before.” For the past few years, the German-born jeweller has made nothing but rings. “I like the format. I can try it all on and… Continue

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  Theatre Critics on the other side of the fence

  DO you ever read a theatre, movie, or music review and think: grrr....anyone could do better than that? Well here’s your chance, if you’re game, to write a review for the Theatreview website. Capital Times’ theatre reviewer Lynn Freeman and film reviewer Dan… Continue

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  Minge binge

  While the cast and crew are all feminists, the real “f” word in a new play at Bats Theatre, is fun. You might be able to tell that by its name. MINGE minge minge minge minge. Minge. Miiiiiiiiinge. What this isn’t is a superficial attempt to draw you into… Continue

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  Exterior decorator

  IF you’re not familiar with his work already, you soon will be. The paintings of the man who calls himself Drypnz are slowly taking over Wellington’s walls, from opposite Massey University’s entrance at the top of Taranaki Street to the front wall of the Japanese… Continue

• Live theatre for Petone

  PETONE’S about to get a new space for live theatre, and it’s opening in the spirit of Christmas. Actress Geraldine Brophy will perform her one-woman play Mrs Merry’s Christmas Concert at THE BOX, a space created by Brophy and her partner. “It’s the first little… Continue

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  The great escapist

  Eva Prowse is sassy, but not immediately so. Melody Thomas reports on the hidden complexity of the singer who’s hailed to be pretty damn good. ON first impression musician Eva Prowse comes across as very sweet and perhaps a little shy. Soldier on through… Continue

• Klezmerising Houdini

  THE word “Klezmer” translates to “Vessel of sound”. “Klezmer music reflects the joys and sorrows of the human voice. You can hear laughs and cries in the music, especially in the violin and clarinet,” says David Weinstein, guitarist, mandolin player and vocalist… Continue

• Vienna highlight

  PLAYING in Vienna was the highlight of my musical life. Everything in Vienna was so perfect - the buildings and the city, everywhere was art. The Musikverein is overwhelming; shimmering and beautiful. I didn’t feel nervous at all, just so excited. It was such… Continue

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  Bird songs

  DUDLEY Benson makes beautiful music. His latest album, Forest: Songs by Hirini Melboune, interweaves elements of barbershop, choral and folk music with beat boxing, ethereal harmony and bird mimicry. The entire album is made up of human voice, except contributions… Continue

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  Do not pass go

  JIM Moriarty, the Wellington actor remembered for his part in television soap Close to Home in the 70s and 80s – for those too young to remember, Shortland Street is its modern equivalent - is not just writing plays. He’s set up the Te Rakau Trust 21 years ago.… Continue

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  Grae’s Anatomy

  TWO Wellington gigs in less than a year? New York’s Jean Grae must be damn fond of our city. Or long plane trips. RAPPER Jean Grae really wants to be a ninja. “My ninja training’s going pretty good,” she says, before two loud beeps sound out from accidentally… Continue

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  Decide for yourself

  DECIDE for yourself. That’s what Rob Appierdo wants you to do. Inspired by American anti-consumerism mag - Adbusters – he’s directing a play that challenges our capitalist system. It’s Everything is OK, a Bats Theatre 2010 Stab commission. He doesn’t want… Continue

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  Superstar Pasifika

  WELLINGTONANIONS took out two of five Creative New Zealand Arts Pasifika Awards on Monday night. The annual awards aim to encourage and honour New Zealanders in Pacific Arts. Painter, sculptor and printmaker Michel Tuffery won the Contemporary Pacific Artist’s… Continue

• Invest in artists

  HOW much is the arts and culture sector worth to Wellington City? A survey commissioned by the Wellington City Council is attempting to quantify the economic contribution of Wellington arts. Around 35-40 people in music, theatre, dance, and visual arts, are being… Continue

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  Turn back the pages

  In the 1980s, eight-year-old Briton Sam Trubridge, his brother, and his mum and dad packed up their life and sailed to New Zealand in a boat. They sought warmer climates than those in Europe. Hawkes Bay – open spaces, sandy beaches, and warmth – seemed a good… Continue

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  Absentee cowgirl

  “HOW many cows, Robert?” pop star Bonnie Tyler calls across the room to her husband. She’s owned an 800 acre, 1000 cow dairy farm in Taupo for 25 years, but this year was the first time she’s seen it. In fact, this year is the first time she’s even been to New… Continue

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  Students on a world stage

  NEW Zealand School of Dance has scored a world-class choreographer to lead one of its graduation dances. Jirí Kylián, who choreographs the Kylián programme sponsored by the Dutch Embassy, is a significant figure in the dance world. He’s choreographed some 100… Continue

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  What goes on, on tour?

  Wellington’s NZSO violinist Pam Jiang gives Capital Times a taste of her first international tour. IT’S concert day in Shanghai and we’ve just arrived at expo. Our instruments were freighted over so it’s been quite weird without my violin - normally it’s… Continue

• Vector resurrector

  AUDIENCES can’t get enough of Vector Wellington Orchestra. Recent analysis of subscription numbers, or numbers of people booking more than two shows in advance, shows an increase of 662% in the past four years. Vector Wellington Orchestra music director Marc… Continue

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  Versify

  MERCEDES Webb-Pullman wants poetry to be something everyone can enjoy. “It shouldn’t be kept just for special occasions. I’d like poetry to be something we’re in contact with all the time in the ordinary world,” she says. With this in mind she entered the Whitireia… Continue

• Nothing like it for thirty years

  TE PAPA’s biggest exhibition – and in fact the country’s biggest – since the 1980 Thyssen-Bornemisza exhibition at the National Art Gallery starts on Saturday. “We’ve had nothing like this for 30 years,” Te Papa curator of European art Victoria Robson says of… Continue

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  Clowning glory

  They’re a regular installment at children’s birthday partiesbut, the fear of clowns, or coulrophobia, is so common that a three-day music festival Bestival on the Isle of Wight had to cancel its clown-themed fancy dress after several requests from clown phobics.… Continue

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  Cracked but not out

  LOWER Hutt ballerina Alayna Ng is sitting The Nutcracker out after she snapped her right knee, causing a serious hamstring injury. “It’s a real shame that I’m not able to dance this last production. It’s Gary’s last season with the company. He hired me so I would… Continue

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  Get your learn on

  IT’s an interesting week for Wellington knowledge-seekers. Clearly Wellington citizens are thirsting for knowledge as well as coffee. We looked at five independent lectures and seminars happening around the city. Games in Greece On Wednesday the Olympic… Continue

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  A songwriter in pictures

  Barry Saunders is best known as the guitarist and vocalist for NZ musical institution the Warratahs. A new project sees lyrics from his songs interpreted as arresting works of art. BARRY Saunders needs two places. He’s not sure why exactly, but it’s been… Continue

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  Free at Victoria

  ISRAELI cellist Inbal Megiddo, pictured, performs a chamber music recital on October 27 with accompaniment from Diedre Irons. The free recital, hosted by New Zealand School of Music, includes Popper’s Hungarian Rhapsody, Schumann’s Fantasy Pieces and the Shostakovich… Continue

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  Writers be warned

  HOLLYWOOD scriptwriting guru Robert McKee’s famous book Story is rubbish. Well, that’s what we’re told by a character in Greg McGee’s brand new play Me and Robert McKee. Conrad Newport is directing the play, in which the audience act as writing students in… Continue

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  Apollo leap

  Brad Knewstubb - a Plimmerton man and his friend Kip Chapman want to go far with their play Apollo 13: Mission Control, and they’re negotiating a US launch of their spaceship. “We’d hope to be there by 2012. These things take a long, long, time,” says Knewstubb.… Continue

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  Rain under the umbrella

  WHEN Karloine Tamati, aka musician Ladi6, first moved to Wellington, she couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. “I lived here for a winter and really hated it. I remember holding my umbrella up in Brooklyn and the rain was hitting me from underneath… Continue

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  Food from Jungle Afrika

  BARIKA Darboe is passionate about Africa. The Wellington-based entrepreneur and cultural champion has big plans to properly introduce Africa and New Zealand, first through a gig this month and later when he opens his own restaurant. Darboe says there are three… Continue

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  In a machine, no clothes

  IMAGINE a world where you’re the only person around, naked, in an incubator. For Wellington actor Francis Mountjoy, these aren’t just imaginings. He’s now stripped off everything to perform a one-man show about human conditioning. Mysteriously, the man – who… Continue

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  New Tourist

  This will be international travel of a different kind  for violinist Pam Jiang. she’s preparing to travel with 90 others on the most extensive trip the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra has ever done. Jiang, 27, who began playing violin aged four, is Chinese-born,… Continue

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  Wellington farewells guitar stalwart

  MATTHEW MARSHALL is jumping countries after a final concert at Ilott Theatre. He’s been in Wellington for the past 20 years and is one of New Zealand’s leading classical guitarists, who has given master classes here and abroad and years ago studied under esteemed… Continue

• Film maker on tour

  WHEN Mark Williams, Film Archive’s exhibitions manager, was offered the chance to work on the collection of British filmmaker Malcolm Le Grice, he knew he couldn’t turn it down. “[He’s] probably the most important avant-garde film-maker in Britain to emerge in… Continue

• Film me in

  MORE than 80 actors met in Wellington last Monday to discuss stalled Hobbit negotiations. Wellington actor Greg Ellis was one of a group of actors who spoke out last week in frustration over Hobbit negotiation tactics. “We wanted to get all the information… Continue

• Strike out

  WARREN Maxwell is sitting in his car on the Rimutakas watching a storm unravel when he makes his admission. It’s not entirely true, but good news doesn’t make headlines, so he’s giving me dirt. “I’m having an affair with Strike. The other women in my lives,… Continue

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  Symphony of a songstress

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  Love at first jump

  THE latest Footnote Forte series is based around the theme of the environments we find ourselves in. One choreographer has chosen to meld this with an exploration of relationships, so we thought we’d follow suit. There are three people involved and two love stories.… Continue

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  Outlaws, E Tu

  Jesse James and the Outlaws is not just a clever band name, it’s a pretty accurate reflection of the musicians in this up-and-coming Wellington folk act.  JESSIE Moss comes from a long line of outlaws. There are known Security Intelligence Service (SIS)… Continue

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  Chaos and ecstacy

  DESIGN students are busy making 31 one-off scarves with a brief to marry theatre and textiles. The scarves are to be auctioned to fundraise for new furnishings at Downstage Theatre. Brittany O’Hara is a third-year Massey University design student. “Some of… Continue

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  Coffee, cake and poetry

  JRR. TOLKIEN is known to have said, “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” The creative writing course at Whitireia Community Polytechnic understands this and has formulated a competition from it. Eat… Continue

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  Best of Wellington 2010 Results

  WELLINGTON may be New Zealand’s capital city, but one of our Capital Times’ readers thinks ‘it’s just a big town with a heart’. You, our readers have made some great and interesting choices.. We’ve got winners in there who’ve topped lists again and again – from… Continue

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  Step in time

  WHAT began as a summer fling has turned into a 14-year commitment. The BeatGirls’ Carrie McLaughlin first joined up with the (self-confessed) manic trio after David Backler, friend of co-founder Andrea Sanders, auditioned her six months after the group’s inception.… Continue

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  Supermodel for a night

  Supermodel’s just recorded a debut album – and despite being fresh on the music scene has already hung out at London’s hottest venue and recorded with the same producer as Manic Street Preachers. SUPERMODEL recorded in the picturesque English Cotswolds… Continue

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  Stallion of the opera

  HE GREW up an all-star athlete from Central Otago, has a passion for horses, and a mother who drives taxis. It’s an unusual beginning for an acclaimed opera singer. Jud Arthur, in town to perform as Banquo in New Zealand Opera’s Verdi Macbeth, says he could… Continue

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  I need the Dunny

  A SHIPMENT of toys is stuck in San Francisco while Cathay Pacific deals with 140 tonnes of backlog, but it’s the grown-up’s who are crying. The toy in question is a “Dunny” – a figure produced by US-based art toy creator Kidrobot that functions as a generic model… Continue

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  Boogie-woogie fever

  THE life of boogie-woogie and ragtime piano queen Winifred Atwell will be celebrated on Sunday with a night of sparkly cabaret. Pianist Jan Preston, sister of Wellington filmmaker Gaylene, says her show is inspired by audiences who loved it when she played Atwell’s… Continue

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  Lovers, not fighters

  ART’s language is universal. Deadly, “a portrayal of a relationship between a man, a woman, and the seven deadly sins”, co-stars two Argentinean circus performers who speak broken English. But co-writer Deborah Pope says that’s no barrier to the production. … Continue

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  Leaps and binds

  SHE’S always been a hero and a champion for budding Wellington artists. Biddy Grant, creatively speaking, is coming out of the closet. For almost a decade Grant has helped creatives find employment through the Pathways to Cultural Employment (PACE) scheme - often… Continue

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  Strong women

  Maori artist Lisa Reihana challenges herself, again, with her latest photographic study. The series she created might be nude, but it’s not about sex. INTERVIEWING Lisa Reihana is like peeling away layers from an onion. And peeling away layers is exactly… Continue

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  Sophie is choice

  Young Wellington designer Sophie Burrowes is off to Fashion Week. The Hataitai student entered Westpac’s young designer of the year competition, winning a top three placing and a chance to showcase her work at the inaugural event. SOPHIE Burrowes has come… Continue

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  Rough rehearsals

  THE cast of Father Familiar have spent the past week marooned in Christchurch, following the September 4 earthquake. They lost a third of their usual rehearsal time when Mazda Theatre in Christchurch CBD was shut off to the public. “You’re in limbo – you can’t… Continue

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  Word painting

  NIGEL Brown likes to paint words in Cosy Nook. His latest series of paintings, New Lemon Tree, were created in his wild Southland home near Foveaux Strait, “where there is lots of wind, and citrus and subtropical things find it hard to grow”. But a lone lemon… Continue

• The write design

  Wellingtonian Fifi Colston has the WOW factor. She is a successful illustrator, designer and writer. CHILDRENS writer Fifi Colston describes her participation in the World of Wearable Arts show as “a little bit mad”. She’s entered 17 garments in 15 WOW shows… Continue

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  Pressing images

  Horrific, catastrophic, uplifting and beautiful – the World Press Photography Exhibition features 200 images from around the world that will provoke you and pull your heartstrings. THREE lambs huddle together, peering through the window of a rustic Italian… Continue

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  Corruption and creation in Africa

  Cirque Mother Africa is a celebration of all things African, but given the choice the director and creator of the elaborate stage show wouldn’t live there. ZIMBABWEAN break dancer-turned stage show director Winston Ruddle has a love-hate relationship with… Continue

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  Trinity Roots are back

  MUCH-LOVED Wellington band TrinityRoots have reformed. Band member Warren Maxwell, who went on to play with Fat Freddy’s Drop and Little Bushman, says a series of summer festivals are in the pipe-line. TrinityRoots’ Riki Gooch, Rio Hemopo and Maxwell called it… Continue

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  Capital will miss out, says promoter

  A Wellington City Council proposal could see the operation of six Wellington venues controlled by only one organisation. The council will decide whether the St James Theatre, Opera House, Town Hall, Michael Fowler Centre, TSB Arena and Shed 6 should come under… Continue

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  Ready. Set. Go!

  THE Datsuns have an album’s worth of new material to showcase at their first show in Wellington in five months. “It will be a chance to blow out the cobwebs - expect it to be loud and sloppy,” says vocalist and bass player Dolf de Borst. Since their year-long… Continue

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  Faith in Wellington

  VECTOR Wellington orchestra violist Faith Austin loves performing in Wellington so much she pays her own travel expenses. “I use air-points when I can and I am lucky enough to have friends and family to stay with when I get here,” she says. Austin, a former New… Continue

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  I am a rubbish singer

  MY cheeks are hot. I feel all sweaty. I think I’m going to faint. I’m about to sing with a group of strangers. But I can’t sing. I braved a karaoke stage as an 18 year old and my “friends” recorded my effort and uploaded it onto Youtube … I vowed never to sing… Continue

• Samba spirit

  BRAZILIAN Leandro Cavalcanti came to New Zealand after reading about the country in National Geographic magazine. “There was something about Wellington, and I had a good friend called Wellington, so that was a sign,” he says. Cavalcanti arrived in the capital… Continue

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  Let’s talk about sex, baby

  EVERYONE remembers the first time they had sex. In 1998 a website was created that allowed people to share such experiences, which inspired American theatre producer Ken Davenport to write My First Time. We asked the cast and crew of the play, directed by Ross… Continue

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  Return of the Kang

  Miae Kang was the first Weta Digital artist to exhibit at Monique and Calvin Rowe’s Eyeball Kicks store and gallery, now the gallery sells the works of three other Weta artists with an exciting addition on the way. CANADIAN artist Miae Kang moved to Wellington… Continue

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  Buy Wellington made

  Voted Best Artist in last year’s Capital Times Best of Wellington Readers Survey, Tommy Ill has released a debut album that is proudly Wellington-made - from the beats, the recording and mixing, right down to the artwork and the mastering. “I was also surprised… Continue

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  Sexy Rexy

  The arts capital of New Zealand boasts a vibrant and edgy shopping experience. Capital Times celebrates entrepreneurs with a passion for the city. RETAIL boutique and fashion gallery Rex Royale started out as a small vintage store at the St James Markets.… Continue

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  Sadist inspires teenager

  TOI Whakaari student Chris Parker felt liberated when he became an erotic novel and short story writer who enjoys bizarre and violent sexual fantasies. The 19 year old is stoked to play the role of French aristocrat and revolutionary Marquis de Sade, after whom… Continue

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  Disable fable

  Lucy O’Brien’s third play, Katydid, exposes the reality of living with someone with a disability, and deviates from the corny and simplistic formula of films like I Am Sam and The Other Sister. PLAYWRIGHT Lucy O’Brien’s 28 year old sister Sophie has the mind… Continue

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  Schlong time no see

  MUSIC awards don’t guarantee financial success. Just ask Kiwi metal band El Schlong. The Battle of the Bands and Handle the Jandal award winners regularly lug their own equipment on the London underground on the way to gigs. They don’t own a car. “Our gear… Continue

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  Wellington set for Risqué performance

  “THE Queen has sex too”, says “Drag King” Andy Harness. In the past Harness has done the full monty on stage, performed a skit which sexualises the Queen and caused people to storm out of his shows, but he promises his new show Risqué is for everybody, not just… Continue

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  A good story

  A stint living in a zoo inspired David Elliot to pursue a career as an illustrator. The award-winning illustrator of favourites such as the Redwall series by UK author Brian Jacques, was living in Edinburgh and had run out of money. “I went to get a job at a… Continue

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  Behind the crafty mind

  Our lives are filled with the enjoyment of treasures. Capital Times talks with crafty people from around the Wellington region. ARTIST Arlo Edwards who has recently opened his new studio gallery on Dixon Street wants to expand the cultural hub of Wellington.… Continue

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  The life of Spite

  Actor, director, and writer, Tim Spite delves into not only his own family life, but also that of the Bain family, in his latest production. TIM Spite and his cast and crew spent three months as a sort of jury in the Bain family murder case. The multiple… Continue

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  Every Penny counts

  A Wellington band’s clever music video that shows them making their own instruments has won them a showing at a big film festival in London. THE Thomas Oliver Band’s video has been selected from over 1,000 entries to show in an international competition alongside… Continue

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  Feeling merry

  IN the build up to the Rugby World Cup, old booze hags The Feelers are excited about their upcoming winter tour because they are returning to their roots: the pub. Drummer Hamish Gee laughs, “I don’t really remember the first five years of The Feelers. We were… Continue

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  Hip hooray for Kura

  KURA gallery on Allen Street is turning 10, and its celebrations will bring its opening a decade ago full-circle. Its celebratory dinner later this month at the historic Robert Orr House in Lower Hutt is appropriate because it was also the location of Kura’s original… Continue

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  Scott free in New Zealand

  WHEN Broadway singer Jacqui Scott was two, she had the loudest singing voice in her church’s congregation. The youngster’s love of belting out a tune convinced her parents to enrol her into singing and piano lessons when she was only six. Four years later Scott… Continue

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  Behind the crafty mind

  Our lives are filled with the enjoyment of treasures. Capital Times talks with crafty people from around the Wellington region. WEAVER Kohai Grace is in the frame. Grace leads the Maori weaving group Whare Tukutuku who received the last round of funding from… Continue

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  The dog is dead

  LORI Leigh reckons it was no coincidence that she brought the award-winning play Dog Meets God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead to New Zealand. The American director saw the play about the much-loved Charlie Brown characters all grown up, in New York City,… Continue

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  That's poetry, man

  Sam Hunt: Poet, drunk, or genius?  A documentary featured in the New Zealand International Film Festival sheds a light. WHEN filmmakers Jim Scott and Tim Rose applied to the Film Commission for financing their documentary about poet Sam Hunt, they were… Continue

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  Cleaning windows to striking images

  WINDOW washer Richard Bigwood has always admired the art on the other side of the glass. By day he cleans windows at buildings like the Wellington City Gallery and government and corporate foyers. “Some of the exhibits have been very interesting. The government… Continue

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  Getting the pitch right

  SHE’s a school girl who can sing, run riot on the rugby pitch, and wants to go to France to get better at both. Sixteen year-old Fa’asua Makisi will perform in a Wellington concert alongside her opera-star uncle Ben Makisi, in a bid to raise $4,000 for a six-month… Continue

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  The art of war

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  Take a great gulp

  ACTRESS Miranda Manasiadis calls herself a “book geek” and read The Great Gatsby when she was 17. “The last paragraph just left me sobbing and sobbing – I was surviving those heightened teenage emotions, and it was such a tragedy,” Manasiadis says. Ken Duncum,… Continue

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  Dance Your Socks Off no more

  THE old dance socks are in the bin. There will be no Dance Your Socks Off Festival this year as Wellington’s dance community works out a new festival for 2011. “It won’t return in its present form, but a prototype festival will launch next year,” says Linda Lim,… Continue

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  The tale of a portrait

  AVENAL McKinnon is glowing as she chats about the latest portraits adorning the walls of the New Zealand Portrait Gallery. JUST days prior, the gallery’s director received the news she’d been so badly hoping for: The Portrait Gallery doesn’t have to move again.… Continue

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  Town Hall shape shifts to stadium soul

  DRUM and bass lyrics master PDigsss is “chuffed” that out of the vampire nature of the music industry; New Zealand music has found its way. This month, the front man of New Zealand’s premier electronic group Shapeshifter is returning to the capital after a three… Continue

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  Twain is back

  AFTER its success at the International Arts Festival, Mark Twain and Me in Maoriland is back, new and improved. The hard work is far from over, however. The production from Taki Rua Maori theatre company has been several years in the making. It uses American… Continue

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  It’s La De Da for the Capital

  ALANA Estate’s concern about hosting a new music festival over New Years was that people might buy more beer than wine. “I told them they just need to price their wine cheaper,” laughs La De Da festival organiser Josh Mossman. “They’re going to do their own La… Continue

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  Competition, colour, and Collier

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• Cuba Street king keeps crown

  Peter McLeavey is not retiring, in spite of rumours to that effect. The greatly respected Cuba Street gallery owner smiles gently at the speculation. “I will continue to work with my artists and clients until I am unable to crawl up the stairs, he says.” His… Continue

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  The brink of the rink

  WHEN Olga Sharutenko was 11, she was ice-skating six-days a week, for two sessions a day, leaving just enough time for school. She’s now a world-top ice skater, and will skate in Wellington as Odette, the swan princess, in Swan Lake on Ice. Sharutenko who is… Continue

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  New city space to create

  STEPPING inside the old Frederick Street Church in Te Aro is like entering a scene from Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test. In the book, Ken Kesey and his eclectic band of Merry Pranksters trip across America in 1968 introducing people to the recently… Continue

• Madness at the Church

  The old Frederick Street Church in Te Aro is now an experimental music machine. New lessee Daniel Beban has given the Church a breath of fresh air and encourages DIY music making. Beban’s band The Orchestra of Spheres was born in the Church, and last week released… Continue

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  Buckwhips buck up

  THE Lonesome Buckwhips have had albums banned, every member has spent time in jail, and one member is pregnant to her half-brother. The band is coming to Wellington to perform a one-off show, Buckapapa, at Downstage Theatre. Staying true to their knack for bad… Continue

• Gnome swings a butcher’s knife

  THE gnome’s gone walkabout! In time for the school holidays, a wayward gnome has made it to Circa Theatre, and is subject to the wishes of children. Wellington man Pete Doile is playing Norman the Gnome in the children’s production, Gnome on the Roam, and says… Continue

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  A resident ink addict

  CONTROVERSIAL artist Wayne Youle is returning to the Capital in style to take up the Rita Angus Residency. The award has been dormant for the past two years until WelTec worked with the Thorndon Trust to resurrect it. Youle who arrives in August, now lives north… Continue

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  Don’t wait for Godot

  SIR Ian McKellen was recently mistaken for a homeless man. The actor, best known to many Kiwis as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, was not offended. McKellen was taking a breather on a Melbourne park bench between rehearsals for his role of homeless… Continue

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  Strung Out Outsiders

  WELLINGTON band The Outsiders have only been around a couple of years, but they’ve already toured the world, and will open for a major US punk band. The band is to play alongside Strung Out, an 18-year-old punk rock band from California, which is set to grace… Continue

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  The hidden masks of tapa cloth

  TAPA cloth is coming to Wellington on a seismic scale. Te Papa will host New Zealand’s largest exhibition of Pacific tapa cloth in 30 years, including massive masks that rarely make it out of the jungles of Papua New Guinea. Tapa cloth is made out of beaten bark… Continue

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  Leave it under the mat

  MANY Kiwis’ mispronounce musician Luc Arnault’s name “Luck”, (say Luke)but luck is an appropriate title. When Arnault arrived three years ago, he and three French friends spent six months busking their way around the country. “We were busking on Cuba Street,… Continue

• A magnetic book

  ALMOST everyone has picked up a compass at some point in their lives and wondered why the needle points north, says Victoria University lecturer Gillian Turner. Her book, North Pole South Pole explores what causes the Earth’s magnetic field, (without which we… Continue

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  The Aotearoa show

  A theatrical showcase of uniquely New Zealand productions is hitting the capital. Three shows at BATS, Downstage, and Circa, delve into our past, present, and future.   Maori tales are prominent, with the New Zealand International Arts Festival highlight… Continue

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  Wanda’s a wonder

  THE best piece of advice Elvis Presley gave Wanda Jackson was that if she wanted to sell records, she should be a rockabilly singer. She listened, and now not only is Jackson hailed as “the Queen of Rockabilly”, but she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall… Continue

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  Burning passion

  DANCER Ryan Di Lello’s parents met and fell in love through dancing. As the saying goes, history repeats, and Utah-bred Ryan met his wife Ashleigh through dancing as well. “We met at a dance studio. She immediately stood out, and I said to my friend, ‘wow – who’s… Continue

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  Taking stock of school sensations

  AT Wellington’s colleges the creative season is in full swing. Stage Challenge, Rockquest, Shakespeare, and theatre productions are drawing in expressive, innovative and enthusiastic pupils. The intimate nature of Wellington means a top Rockquest singer-songwriter… Continue

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  Awaken the silence

  WELLINGTON artist Rhian Sheehan makes music that he says ‘sounds like a slice of nirvana’. Not the band, but the Buddhist concept of a state of being free from suffering and weighty thought. However, Sheehan doesn’t meditate in the conventional way. “I should,… Continue

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  Bring in the big guns

  WELLINGTON has the first-ever comprehensive display of muskets intricately decorated by Maori and Pacific Islanders. The exhibition, held at Pataka Museum of Arts and Cultures, displays the carved weaponry held by museums around the country. Curator Pat Stodart… Continue

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  Vapour tales

  The Beatnuts aren’t keen on Jennifer Lopez. Lopez pirated the beats from Watch Out Now for her 2002 hit song Jenny from the Block so the hip hop and production duo from Queens, New York, took her to court.  She lost and now pays The Beatnuts royalties. “She… Continue

• A card solution

  SOME Wellington men have dreamed up a way to beat those hated ticket scalpers, and eliminate ticket forgery. It saves paper, because it’s quicker, it can disperse the long lines at festivals. And it was started in Wellington. Last week, the five entrepreneurial… Continue

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  Capital Blend

  To celebrate the end of New Zealand Music Month, Capital Times caught up with some of the local artists who featured on our 2002 compilation Capital Blend. The CD reflects a time when Bret McKenzie was part of the Black Seeds, and Flight of the Conchords didn’t… Continue

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  Bieber beats Buffalo

  “IT’S just a bummer about Bieber fever,” says The Phoenix Foundation singer Luke Buda. Justin Bieber, the teen star who sends teenage girls into hysterics, beat the Kiwi band on the Radioscope Album Chart. But Buda’s not complaining. The Phoenix Foundation’s… Continue

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  The opera virgin

  BEFORE The Marriage of Figaro, I’d never been to an opera. I’d never been inclined to go either. I’d heard all the usual comments, “long”, “in Italian” and “bourgeois”. The Marriage of Figaro at the St James Theatre last week was all of these things, but it… Continue

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  Not a tall cowboy tale

  MAORI cowboys were always an old wives tale for Northland artist Faith McManus. “My mum told me her Papa (father-in-law) was a cowboy of the Red Manuka, it was just a local phrase to me,” says McManus. That was until a 1920s photograph of the cowboys appeared… Continue

• Artist's family thought he'd be a bus driver

  WHEN Mu Yuming was 15 years-old he rode up the Himalayan mountainside near his home with the intention of killing himself. Now he travels the world and creates art in public places wearing a silver space suit. In Wellington he has been painting the portraits… Continue

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  Double dose of the live drop

  KEEPING Fat Freddy’s Drop moving is a mission, says trumpet player Toby Laing. “It’s a challenge every day keeping this massive monster together. There are 30 of us on the road, it’s like the Roman Army, we can’t stand still, we just keep marauding on.” The work… Continue

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  Exhibiting the heart of darkness

  PAINTER Liz Maw grew up in a fundamentalist Catholic household. “My mother would speak in tongues … I was completely bewitched by it,” says Maw. The elaborate Catholic ceremonies of her youth filled her with a sense of beauty and the bizarre. Now an atheist,… Continue

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  Hark, hark the art

  THE noise that Wellington’s newest sculpture makes “is halfway between a hum and a whistle”, says Sculpture Trust chairman Neil Plimmer. Akau Tangi, (the sighing sound of the wind) created by renowned artist Phil Dadson, is the fifth and final installation in… Continue

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  Comedian cancels

  UK funny man Jason Cook has canceled his Wellington Comedy Festival shows and has flown home. Fellow UK comedian Tom Wrigglesworth has saved the day, with his show Open Return Letter to Richard Branson. Wrigglesworth was the winner of the Chortle Comedy Award… Continue

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  WAI ORA for the renaissance

  MAORI electronic band WAI travelled the world for eight years on their first album. The band, Mina Ripia and her husband/producer Maaka McGregor, mixes organic Maori sounds with electronic definition. “For 10 years I have been singing the first album,” Ripia… Continue

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  Björn to rock

  ROCKERS Dave Grohl, Lionel Ritchie, Bon Jovi and Rod Stewart rate them, and they’ve played over 5,000 shows in 70 countries. It’s little wonder then Björn Again has a cult following. Björn has put on satirical ABBA shows for 21 years and is coming to the capital.… Continue

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  Emerging talent

  TO compete with the big boys, you have to be smart. That’s exactly how Wellington all-girl hip-hop dance crew Emerge managed to secure a spot at the World Hip Hop Dance Championship in Las Vegas. Even more impressive, all the members are still in school. Emerge… Continue

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  Fish pulp

  WAYNE Barrar has an unusual photograph – it shows tonnes of koi carp fish being ground up in a blender to make bait, after a clean up in the Waikato. The acclaimed Kiwi photographer with an interest in the effects of globalisation on native species has been snapping… Continue

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  Dark Joan, Spooky Adu

  Nirvana, PJ Harvey and Pixies album producer Steve Albini calls Kiwi chanteuse Leila Adu “spooky Adu”, a label she is happy to wear as she returns home from years abroad building a music career. WHAT’S with Joan of Arc? Kiwi singer Leila Adu has been a longtime… Continue

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  Collector's Heaven

  Could the painting granddad left you be worth $100,000? Capital Times talks to one of the assessors of the Museum of Wellington’s version of Antique Roadshow. IT’S not surprising Simon Manchester finds most people’s homes “utilitarian and boring”. His… Continue

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  Library Cull?

  “SUBURBAN libraries are under threat,” says a Kingston resident. After reading Wellington City Council’s 2010 Draft Community Facilities Policy and Implementation Plan, Marie Russell became concerned. Reading between the lines, Russell says libraries in areas… Continue

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  Lake of Weirdness

  Music is blind and photography is deaf, but the union is a harmonious one according to photographer John Lake and musician Mark Leong. PHOTOGRAPHER John Lake is an impulsive risk taker, fascinated with death and music. He tattooed his birth date in a barcode… Continue

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  Legend of love

  WHAT a fitting name for a show – Dance of Desire. Performer Katrina O’Donnell fell in love with fellow dancer Kienan Melino shortly after getting involved with the production. She giggles and goes quiet whenever Melino is mentioned, and when we ask to talk to… Continue

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  Love is all you need

  American ukulele singer Heather Marie Ellison, who’s supported James Brown, Huey Lewis, and Ray Charles, has funded a trip around New Zealand playing her unicorn ukulele. She fell in love with Wellington, and a local boy. WHAT’S a doink? It’s what Heather… Continue

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  A gay life

  FREYA Desmarais was “absolutely terrified” of going to her first Out in the Square fair in 2008, because she’d only just realised she was gay. “I went with a bunch of straight guy friends who were really supportive, and an old dyke gave me a figurine from my favourite… Continue

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  My soul is nomadic

  ON March 16, 2003, a 23-year old American woman activist was crushed to death by a bulldozer while protecting a house to be demolished on the Gaza Strip. The death of Rachel Corrie caused international outrage, and the differing accounts of the tragedy between… Continue

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  Guess who's back

  HOLLIE Smith is back in business. After a “hellish” two years in which her international record deal with Blue Note Records, the parent company of EMI, failed to come into fruition, the singer is now managing her own music. “I couldn’t have done it any differently.… Continue

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  The phone is dead

  ACTOR Gavin Rutherford is a “chunky fellow” who looks uncannily like Oscar winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman (Truman Capote). “People also say I look like Peter Helliar from Rove,” laughs Rutherford, who toyed with the idea of sending a letter to the show saying… Continue

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  Carr drives Kiwi sound

  MINUIT continues to impress international music industry heavyweights while keeping their loyal fans happy, if not a little choked up. The Newtown-based electro pop three piece set off on a delayed album release tour this week to promote Find Me Before I Die A… Continue

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  Middle aged but still on stage

  Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School is turning 40. Director Annie Ruth revisits old memories and discusses future ambitions. THE pictures of two striking women hang on the wall behind Toi Whakaari director Annie Ruth. She hangs them there to honour their memory… Continue

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  Artist with conviction

  SARAH Maxey is prickly. City Gallery’s press release calls Maxey a type designer which infuriates her. And don’t ask her about Kiwi poet Vincent O’Sullivan, even though her latest work at City Gallery’s Hirschfeld Gallery is part of a group exhibition whose title… Continue

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  Will we be eliminated?

  FRINGE Award-winning young theatre group Binge Culture Collective has unfinished business. Not completely satisfied with two of their successful productions, the collective has combined them to create Elimination Rounds, a satirical piece on Generation Y. The… Continue

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  Voice of a saint

  SHE has the face of a saint, and the name and voice to boot. Annie Erin Clark, better known as St Vincent, is in Wellington this week to promote her latest album, Actor, which saw the multi-instrumentalist and member of the Polyphonic Spree open for bands such… Continue

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  Never give up

  MAJOR back injury didn’t stop the Royal NZ Ballet’s Kate Venables working with the company. The former principal dancer (Dracula and The Nutcracker) performed with the Ballet between 2003 and 2007, but a year and a half of that time was spent in pain due to the… Continue

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  Talking art

  The great thing about the New Zealand International Arts Festival is the accessibility. The free talks with artists involved are a good way to enhance any Festival show. PEOPLE sat perched shoulder to shoulder like hot sardines inside City Gallery’s Adam… Continue

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  Break the farce

  THE Walworth Farce looks creepy. A father makes his two sons put on moustaches, wigs and ill fitting suits and do a farce. Since they were kids they have done this every day all the while cooped up in a rundown council flat in London. “That to me is a strange… Continue

• Season of concerts

  THE St Andrew’s Season of Concerts will bring interesting performers to Wellington. Building on a long history of lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s on The Terrace, the organisers hope to recreate the buzz and camaraderie of previous festivals. The NZ International… Continue

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  There’s a hole in my  bucket

  DUNCAN Sargent admits the sculpture he’s entered in this year’s shapeshifter exhibition at TheNewDowse was a “bit of a science experiment”. The Newtown-based furniture maker decided to use green wood – wood that has been recently cut and not treated – to create… Continue

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  Festival fanatic

  HOT old guy Geoff Dyer has more going for him than fine boyish features, a smooth speaking voice and a gentleman’s manner. He can write. Imagining 53 year old Dyer in a hallway hunched over the receiver trying to hear each question (the house he takes the call… Continue

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  The Fringe Cut

  ONE was a secret Spice Girl’s fan, and the other fell in love. Both are stoked to be named Downstage Theatre’s Pick of the Fringe. Fringe festival productions Wannabe and Back/Words will be reworked for the big stage, and enjoy a one-and-a-half week season at… Continue

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  Naked and free

  Guests buzzed around the National Portrait Gallery looking at the 93 portraits in wonder. Who was the winner of the career-changing 2010 Adam Art Award? Capital Times speaks to the lady behind the prize. WHEN artist Harriet Bright heard she’d won the prestigious… Continue

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  Horsey handstands

  IT’S hard enough executing a neat handstand or cartwheel on terra firma let alone on horseback. The Kapiti Equestrian and Vaulting Club will demonstrate the art of performing tricks on trotting or cantering horses at Waitangi Park this weekend, and the club’s… Continue

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  A Te Papa mystery

  LAST Friday a student artist infiltrated Te Papa Museum. A small blue painting was first placed next to the Peter Trevelyan mirrored work outside Te Papa, and then underneath a Judy Millar artwork in a fifth floor exhibition. The work featured the words: “I Believe… Continue

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  Miss you, bro

  MIKE Eager promised his poet friend Simon Williamson that he’d turn a selection of his poems into a book one day. The result is Twenty-five Cars. Sadly, Williamson killed himself in 1999 after a battle with mental illness, and didn’t get to see the book. But… Continue

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  Write a letter

  I have a large TV-sized box filled with letters that friends wrote me while I was at school, stored in the roof of my parents’ house.  I can’t bring myself to throw them away. Playwright, producer and director Juliet O’Brien loves letters too. She can’t remember… Continue

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  Empty talent

  As MTYLAND unfolded, I watched happiness, sorrow, regret, despair and pure madness. I was left feeling empty, but strangely ready to be full again. I couldn’t believe it had been an hour. CLAIRE O’Neil cried after watching a rehearsal of her own dance production.… Continue

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  Keep Wright

  Homegrown ticketholders get ready to trek: this year the Dub and Rock stages are a 15 minute walk apart.  “IT’S a bit of a pain,” says Homegrown’s Kelly Wright referring to the new layout of the music festival on Wellington’s waterfront. “It was so… Continue

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  Deliciously Irish

  IT’S a common misconception that The Seven Irish Tenors are a group of fat opera singers, says one of the tenors Simon Robinson. “The truth is we are in good shape and have a good head of hair,” laughs Robinson. “When people hear ‘tenor’ they think of Pavarotti.… Continue

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  The Don with dreadlocks?

  One Love organisers hope to broaden the music festival’s reggae-focussed appeal by adding Kiwi singer songwriter Don McGlashan to the bill. WHEN Don McGlashan heard he was to headline Radio Active’s One Love music festival he was sure there had been a mistake.… Continue

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  What a Tripp

  ACADEMY AWARD nominee Taika “I think I’m hilarious” Cohen stole the show as the “last minute” MC for the Chapman Tripp Theatre awards on Sunday. His endearing forgetfulness had the audience cracking up at the St James Theatre as he repeatedly neglected to read… Continue

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  Meek creation

  COLLAPSING Creation, written by Arthur Meek, has received the most Chapman Tripp theatre award nominations for 2009. His play about Charles Darwin has been nominated in nine categories, including Best Production. “I honestly think I deserve it,” says Meek. “Downstage… Continue

• The missing score

  The CEO of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra says a proposed orchestral scoring studio will provide what’s missing in New Zealand – a facility to record music for films. “It’s the missing link for the post-production of the film recording industry,” says… Continue

• Digging the NZ Arts Festival

  IT’S a love story about a man and a digger. Transports Exceptionnels is one of the performances to look forward to at the 2010 New Zealand International Arts Festival, and it will be played out at Waitangi Park from February 26. “It’s a romance between a dancer… Continue

Reviews

• Good at the time

  At the movies with Dan Slevin I REALLY enjoyed Alexander Payne’s The Descendants - at least while I was watching it. Some films will do that to you, though. They push all sorts of groovy buttons while you are in the room but they diminish as you re-examine… Continue

• An unlikely combination

  The Mulled Wine Concert, Roger Tibbs and Robert Sharrenborg, Paekakariki, January 28, Reviewed by John Bristed MARY GOW’S smiles echoed those of the audience at the ‘country and blues’ evening she organised last Saturday, and as the concert… Continue

• Stories of Christchurch

  Munted, Directed by Katherine McGill, Bats Theatre, Reviewed by Lynn Freeman HERE’S a night out at the theatre for anyone who’s ever questioned the relevance of live performance. Bare Hunt Collective has interviewed a range of Christchurch people… Continue

• More Auckland than Kiwi

  At the movies with Dan Slevin THE first Sione’s movie arrived in cinemas in 2006 - before I commenced this weekly catalogue of hits and misses - so I have to plead ignorance about the Duck Rockers and their earlier hijinks. I didn’t even try and… Continue

• Shapeless

  Lonely Hearts by Michael Nicholas Williams, Bats Theatre, Reviewed by Craig Beardsworth IN the 1940’s America was gripped by the trial of ‘The Lonely Hearts Killers’. Raymond Fernandez scanned the personal lonely hearts column looking for… Continue

• Keepers, renters and respecters

  At the movies with Dan Slevin I’VE been watching reactions to other people’s “Best of 2011” with interest. It’s fascinating to see online commentators insist that films they have seen are so much better than films that they haven’t.… Continue

• The year in dance

  2011 was an interesting year in the world of Wellington dance. History shows that in times of recession and restriction the arts flourish and social commentary is strong.  2011 was such a year. Against an uncertain backdrop of financial difficulty there… Continue

• The 2011 Music Year in Review

  Music Reviewer Garth Wilshere reflects on highlights and lowlights. THE last weekend of concerts for the year provided two highlights of a full and impressive musical year. We got a feast of Benjamin Britten with the innovative Britten weekend with Tudor… Continue

• A good squeeze

  At the movies with Dan Slevin LIKE students swotting for exams New Zealand film distributors seem to have run out of year for all the films they have to release so there are some really big names being squeezed into the next two weeks. IF you can’t… Continue

• Glorious night of singing

  New Zealand Opera Society (Wellington Branch) End-of-Year Recital, St Andrew’s on The Terrace, November 15, RevIewed by Garth Wilshere A regular on the musical calendar The New Zealand Opera Society End-of-Year Recital always showcases young singers and… Continue

• A year of OMG productions

  IT’S an open secret that I’ve been talking about retiring from theatre reviewing. It’s been 17 years, give or take, and trying to keep your work sounding fresh and coming up with previously unused adjectives gets harder. There were a couple… Continue

• Christmas music

  New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Christmas Pops – The Mainland Tour, Conductor  – Alexander Briger, With Helen Medlyn, Wellington Town Hall, December 1, Reviewed by Garth Wilshere THE NZSO splits into two for a tour of smaller centres at this… Continue

• Arthur Christmas is a keeper

  At the moview with Dan Slevin I believe that it should be illegal to even mention the word Christmas in any month other than December. Yup, illegal. No one should be allowed to even breathe it, let alone have parades, display mince pies in supermarkets or… Continue

• Heart lacks substance

  Party with the Aunties, Directed by Erina Daniels, Miramar Rangers AFC Clubrooms,  November 23, Reviewed by Lynn Freeman. LOOKING back over my scribbled notes for this devised play set, the word HEART is underlined many times. This story of a whanau… Continue

• Perfect Christmas gift

  Tinderbox, Directed by Eleanor Bishop, Bats Theatre, November 25, Reviewed by Lynn Freeman Fri 25 Nov Dear Santa IF you can’t give me world peace for Christmas, could I please have a play that reminds people about the futility of war and of the… Continue

• Swedish delights

  Vector Wellington Orchestra, Conductor – Marc Taddei, Soloist – Anne Sofie von Otter (Mezzo Soprano), Wellington Town Hall, November 18, Reviewed by Garth Wilshere THERE is no doubt that the highlight of this concert was the performance by renowned… Continue

• Students fully engaged

  Graduation Season, New Zealand School of Dance, Te Whaea Theatre, November 19, Reviewed by Ann Hunt. GRADUATING students from the School’s classical ballet and contemporary dance streams are showcased to laudatory effect in this most enjoyable programme.… Continue

• Pushing the envelope

  Wake Less, Directed by Joel Baxendale, Bats Theatre. November 11, Reviewed by Lynn Freeman. THERE are some plays you leave shaking your head, wondering if you have just seen a work of  great complexity or something that was just trying too hard to be… Continue

• Bold, spirited playing

  Wellington Youth Sinfonietta, Director - Michael Vinten, and Schola Sinfonica, Director - Rachel Hyde, Final Concert for 2011, St Andrew’s on The Terrace, November 6. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere. THESE end-of year concerts are always bitter-sweet because… Continue

• Silent no longer

  Fritz Lang’s Metropolis with the original orchestral score, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Conductor – Frank Strobel. Michael Fowler Centre, November 5, Reviewed by Garth Wilshere THE history of this seminal film, one of the last silent movies… Continue

• Depressing but needing to be told

  Carnival Hound, Downstage Theatre, November 3. Reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant INSPIRED by choreographer Maria Dabrowska’s own parents and their stories of the deprivations and destruction of the Second World War when they met here in New Zealand as settled… Continue

• Connecting all the senses

  Rise, Java Dance Company, Stab season at Bats Theatre, October 30, Reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant. FORCED gasping from hanging bodies and a stream of flour floating, falling, cascading from the ceiling involve us as five dancers start their journey and response… Continue

• Spookily perfect

  At the movies with Dan Slevin. EXPAT Kiwi auteur Andrew Niccol (Gattaca) somehow always manages to tap in to the zeitgeist and with new sci-fi thriller In Time his own timing is almost spookily perfect. A parable about the modern political economy, In Time… Continue

• Strong and compelling

  The Sleeping Beauty, The Royal New Zealand Ballet, St James Theatre, October 23. Reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant IT was a lovely gesture to dedicate the opening performance of this new traditional picture story ballet to the late Alexander Grant. It is exactly… Continue

• MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM’S T…

  MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM’S The Trip is the best picture about middle-aged male angst since Sideways, and it’s possibly even better than that fine film. Two privileged English celebrities spend a week driving around the North of England from one fine restaurant… Continue

• Farce with vigour

  Boutique Opera Presents “Tom Jones”, Conductor – Michael Vinten, Stage Director – Alison Hodge, Riley Centre, Wellington High School. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere. THIS MUSICAL FARCE was devised by directors Alison Hodge and Michael… Continue

• Blatant and desperate

  At the movies with Dan Slevin WHILE thousands of protestors gather in Manhattan to “Occupy Wall St”, the European economy teeters on the brink of collapse, unemployment across the developed world grows and several Pacific island nations report… Continue

• The Renaissance sound

  Tudor Consort Renaissance Influences IV: Made in New Zealand, Director Michael Stewart, St Mary of the Angels Church, October 8, Reviewed by Garth Wilshere. THE core of the programme, Gillian Whitehead’s Missa Brevis, had movements interspersed throughout… Continue

• Finale

  Wellington Youth Orchestra, Conductor – Gregory Squire, Soloist – Asaph Verner (piano), Wellington Town Hall, October 3, Reviewed by Garth Wilshere. FOR their final concert of the year the WYO were joined by the Pelorus Trust Wellington Brass… Continue

• Choir enjoys the concert

  Orpheus Choir An Evening with Cole Porter, Conductor Mark W. Dorrell With Sarah Lineham, Chris Crowe and Vector Orchestra Players, Wellington Town Hall, October 7, Reviewed by Garth Wilshere . THIS concert was in part a repeat of a successful one given two… Continue

• Arohanui

  Arohanui, The Opera House, Reviewed by Lynn Freeman THIS is huge - operatic kapa haka blending the contemporary and the traditional, tied together with a message for our times. It is ambitious and it demands a huge amount from those on stage, who give it… Continue

• Power from student orchestra

  New Zealand School of Music Orchestra, In Remembrance, Soloists with Conductor – Ken Young, Wellington Town Hall, September 29. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere. THIS Jewish New Year concert on the anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre by the Nazis in Kiev… Continue

• The Money Soak

  The the movies with Dan Slevin. THE Rugby World Cup was supposed to be a boon for the whole economy, the thousands of excited guests soaking up our food, wine, culture and hospitality. Ask any cinema (or theatre) owner what’s really happening and you’ll… Continue

• Refreshing political satire

  The Engine Room, Directed by Hannah Smith, Bats Theatre. Reviewed by Lynn Freeman WATCHING parliament can be like being on the sidelines of an ill-natured, poorly refereed children’s rugby match. Certainly at the moment there’s a brutal political… Continue

• Not about the rugby

  The First Asian A* B*, Directed by Edward Peni, Bats Theatre. Reviewed by Lynn Freeman FIRST I, George Nepia at Circa and now The First Asian A* B* at Bats – the RWC, whether it goes our way or not, deserves a big cheer for much of the art we’re… Continue

• Footnote satisfies

  Made in New Zealand 2011, Footnote Dance, Opera House, September 22. Reviewed by Ann Hunt FOOTNOTE’S latest season of four new works is exciting, innovative, extremely well danced and deserves to be widely seen. Company members Francis Christeller… Continue

• No joy

  Odes to Joy, New Zealand Symphony, Orchestra, Conductor – Pietari Inkinen, Michael Fowler Centre, September 22. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere. THERE was a lot of anticipation riding on this concert with four young New Zealand soloists, massed choirs, the… Continue

• Stretched beyond abilities

  Wellington Chamber Orchestra, Conductor – Rachel Hyde, St Andrew’s on The Terrace, September 25. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere AS an amateur group the Wellington Chamber Orchestra depend on the direction they get from the conductor and in this concert… Continue

• Return of a favourite

  Wellington Chamber Music, The Nautilus Trio, Ilott Theatre, September 18. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere. THE last of this year’s Wellington Chamber Music Sunday Concerts, brought back a favourite performer, previous NZSO Concertmaster violinist Wilma Smith,… Continue

• Sex on show

  In Flagrante by Mary-Jane O’Reilly, St James Cabaret, September 16. Reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant IT has been a feast of dance over the past weeks with contemporary, cultural and late-night adult entertainment all having their focus. On the dark side… Continue

• Protect or betray?

  The Last of the Human Freedoms, By Keren M. Chiaroni, Harper Collins, RRP $39.99. Reviewed by Niels Reinsborg. VICTORIA University French lecturer Keren Chiaroni exposes the best and worst of human nature in her book The Last of the Human Freedoms. Based… Continue

• Cultural dance showcase

  Kowhiti Dance, Opera House, September 15. Reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant MERENIA Gray and Tanemahuta Gray have staged a follow up show to the beginnings of this project last year. In its inaugural season Kowhiti set out to celebrate Maori choreographers and… Continue

• Well schooled women give Pacific precision

  Black Grace Verse 2 Opera House Monday 12 September 2011, Reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant Black Grace has changed - significantly. From an all-male  company with a strong cultural context the works on stage now were danced mainly by the feisty and exceedingly… Continue

• Lyrical tribute to Nepia

  I, George Nepia, Directed by Jason Te Kare, Circa Two, to September 16. Reviewed by Lynn Freeman BACK when our All Blacks were invincible, and were adored and respected for playing for the love of the game as amateurs, came heroes like George Nepia. As part… Continue

• Monsters fail to titillate

  Monster Burlesque, Paramount Theatre. Reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant BILLED as an experience “never before experienced by man or monster” this show has had a wealth of publicity with fabulous feline and furry photos by Stephen A’Court promising… Continue

• Zest and zing from sinfonietta

  Wellington Youth Sinfonietta, Conductor  – Michael Vinten, St Andrew’s on The Terrace, September 4. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere CLOSE on the heels of the National Youth Orchestra it was intriguing to hear another even younger orchestra, The… Continue

• At risk drivers

  At the movies with Dan Slevin DESPITE my positive review for TT3D last week, I’m not a huge motorsport fan. In 1996 I worked on the last Nissan Mobil 500 race around the waterfront and couldn’t see the appeal of watching cars go belting around… Continue

• Youth excels

  NZSO National Youth Orchestra, Conductor – James Judd, Soloist  – Cameron Chambers (organ), Wellington Town Hall, September 2. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere THE annual National Youth Orchestra concert is always a highlight and this one was no… Continue

• Be careful what you wish

  Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Directed David Lawrence, Bats Theatre, to September 10. Reviewed by Lynn Freeman YOU can rely on Dean Parker to deliver a no-holds-barred political satire, though this critique of Sir Robert Muldoon starts off with a great deal… Continue

• Supercharged quartet

  Wellington Chamber Music  – SundayConcerts, String Sextet Spectacular, Ilott Theatre August 28. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere This was a rare opportunity to hear three String Sextets courtesy of the Aroha Quartet (Haihong Liu & Beiyi Xue (violins),… Continue

• Inspired memoirs

  On the Upside-Down of the World, Directed by Colin McColl, Downstage Theatre, To September 10. Reviewed by Lynn Freeman FORGET the Rugby World Cup – In recent weeks Wellington’s theatres have presented us with three world class award winning productions,… Continue

• Urine and boiled cabbage

  Chalk, Directed by Abigail Greenwood, Bats Theatre. Reviewed by Lynn Freeman ISLA Adamson and Josephine Stewart-Tewhiu are an impressive double act. What is so delicious about them is their genius storytelling and their keen observational skills bringing… Continue

• Chalk and cheese

  Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, New Zealand Opera, St James Theatre, to September 3. Reviewed by Kate McLean. NBR New Zealand Opera’s double bill of Cavelleria Rusticana and Pagliacci was an evening of two very definite halves. Both operas benefited… Continue

• Exuberant and rich

  Latitude 37 touring for Chamber Music New Zealand, Ilott Theatre, August 17. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere. WITH Latitude 37 we heard virtuosic playing in a chamber music context exhibiting current Baroque practice, streets away from the often indulgent reverence… Continue

• Titillating romp

  The Larnachs, by Owen Marshall, Random House. RRP: $39.99, Reviewed by Martin Doyle. WHEN MP William Larnach blew his brains out in a committee room at Parliament back in 1898, he probably had no idea that so many bits and pieces of his private life would… Continue

• Energetic jazz

  New Zealand School of Music Jazz Festival, Jazz Gala – Directed by Rodger Fox, Wellington Town Hall, August 19. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere. THIS was an exciting concert with a big contingent of school age players in the audience who had participated… Continue

• Play it again

  Glorious, Directed by Patrick Davies, Bats Theatre. Reviewed by Lynn Freeman RICHARD Huber must have watched a powerful lot of movies from Hollywood’s Golden Years, to write this loving tribute to Hepburn, Grant and the other stars of the time. It’s… Continue

• Too many extras

  Wellington Youth Orchestra, Conductor - Greg Squire, Sacred Heart Cathedral August 8. NZ School of Music Chamber Orchestra , Conductor - Kenneth Young, Soloist - Reuben Chin, St Andrew’s on The Terrace August 13. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere.  I… Continue

• Fast and furious

  Machomer, St James Theatre, August 11. Reviewed by Lynn Freeman THIS a mash up of the Simpsons and the Mcbeths, two dysfunctional families brought together by Canadian Rich Miller. It’s a vehicle for his brilliance at impersonation and his considerable… Continue

• Bring back Petrenko

  New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Conductor – Vasily Petrenko, Soloist – Michael Houstoun (piano), Michael Fowler Centre, August 5. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere AN expectant full house came for this great concert. Tall and elegant young Russian… Continue

• Masterful threesome

  Saguaro Trio, Wellington Town Hall, August 3. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere I was impressed by pianist John Chen the time I first heard him in the Kapiti Piano Competition, ten or so years ago while he was still at school. From there he developed as a soloist… Continue

• Choose your actors

  Eight, Directed by Simon Vincent, Circa Two, to September 3. Reviewed by Lynn Freeman WHAT in common have - a high class hooker to conservative men whose days have come and gone, a teenager recounting his first sexual encounter and a young man who converses… Continue

• A little of everything

  Soap, St James Theatre, to August 6 Reviewed by Craig Beardsworth CIRCUS, cabaret, burlesque, mime, comedy and some opera. Soap seems to have a little of everything. Set to an eclectic soundtrack this beguiling mix of perfectly executed hand-balancing and… Continue

• A half decent captain

  At the movies with Dan Slevin OF all the remakes, sequels, franchises and comic book adaptations we are being offered this winter Captain America: The First Avenger is the one least likely to send a shiver of excitement down a Kiwi filmgoer’s spine.… Continue

• Brass to the fore

  Brass Splendour, NZSO Soloists, Wellington Town Hall, July 28 Reviewed by Garth Wilshere THIS is the third sectional showcase and after strings last year and winds earlier in the year we reached brass, with some friends from the percussion section. Understandably… Continue

• Festival of New Theatre

  Young & Hungry Festival of New Theatre Bats Theatre Reviewed by Lynn Freeman and Adam Burgess EVEN those of us who were relatively young when Young & Hungry started are getting on, but still this annual festival delights and often surprises.… Continue

• Grandeur and Frivolity - Music and fashion from the Courts of Louis XIV & XV

  The Historical Arts Trust Grandeur and Frivolity – Music and fashion from the Courts of Louis XIV & XV St Andrew’s on The Terrace, July 23 Reviewed by Garth Wilshere THIS Saturday afternoon event was the third from this new charitable… Continue

• Awhi Tapu

  Awhi Tapu Directed by Leo Gene Peters Downstage Theatre, to July 30 Reviewed by Lynn Freeman Eight years on from when Albert Beltz wrote Awhi Tapu its themes are as relevant as ever. It looks at the impact on small town New Zealand of industry closures,… Continue

• Bow String Orchestra

  Bow String Orchestra Conductor:  Rachel Hyde St Andrew’s on The Terrace, July 10 Reviewed by Garth Wilshere   FORMED last year, Bow is an amateur group of string players who prepare and rehearse on a workshop weekend culminating in a… Continue

• Wellington Chamber Orchestra

  Wellington Chamber Orchestra Conductor:  Kenneth Young Soloist: Emma Sayers St Andrew’s on The Terrace, July 3 Reviewed by Garth Wilshere   THIS amateur orchestra under professional conductor Kenneth Young tackled a challenging programme… Continue

• New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

  New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Conductor:  Pinchas Steinberg Soloist: Simon Trpceski Michael Fowler Centre, July 8 Reviewed by Garth Wilshere THERE seems no doubt that a charismatic piano soloist and populist Russian repertoire brings out the… Continue

• Concours de la Chanson, French Singing Competition

  Concours de la Chanson, French Singing Competition Grande Finale St Andrew’s on The Terrace, Reviewed by Garth Wilshere   THIS competition organised by Alliance Française Wellington in co-ordination with Jenny Wollerman at the NZ School of… Continue

• Wellington G&S Light Opera

  Wellington G&S Light Opera Trial by Jury & HMS Pinafore Wellington Opera House Reviewed by Garth Wilshere DIRECTOR Gillian Jerome’s production was safe, straightforward, and worked effectively if too conservative for my taste. The sets and costumes… Continue

• Nga Hau E Wha

  Nga Hau E Wha Okareka Dance Company Te Whaea Theatre Reviewed by Jan Bolwell FROM its Butoh- style opening to the final tableau as dancers clamber onto a rope representing a pou, Nga Hau E Wha is an intense dance piece that glows with integrity and demonstrates… Continue

• An Oak Tree

  An Oak Tree Directed by Andrew Foster Circa Two Reviewed by Lynn Freeman THERE are some plays that, when they finish, you can’t wait to turn to your companion and talk about it. An Oak Tree by Tim Crouch is just such a work. It doesn’t only… Continue

• Liederabend

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• Pinwheel. Thricely? Precisely. A pocket full of Pips.

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• Baby Pops Once Upon a Time

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• Global warming, cars and sentimentality

  At the movies with Dan Slevin WHEN I first visited this country back in 1982 we flew across the Pacific Ocean in daylight and from my window seat I got a bird’s eye view of … not very much. Once I got here I understood that there was a lot going… Continue

• NZSO

  New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Conductor: Pietari Inkinen Michael Fowler Centre, June 25 Reviewed by Garth Wilshere THIS programme interestingly consisted of some of the many pieces based on or inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Conductor… Continue

• Meet the Churchills

  Meet the Churchills Directed by Ross Jolly Circa Theatre, to July 16 Reviewed by Lynn Freeman POWER, privilege and wealth are no guarantee of happiness. Just look at the Churchills. New Zealand playwright Paul Baker brings together Sir Winston, two of… Continue

• Tre-Belle “In Harmony”

  Tre-Belle “In Harmony” Museum Art Hotel in Cabaret Season St James Theatre Gallery Thursday June 16 Reviewed by Garth Wilshere  THE Cabaret Season at the St James Theatre Gallery, now in its third year has consistently proved successful… Continue

• Musical animation

  Brentano String Quartet touring for Chamber Music New Zealand, Wellington Town Hall, June 12. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere THE young American Brentano String Quartet impressed in their previous visit here in 2007, and maintained that impression this time with… Continue

• Something missing

  New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Mahler Symphony No. 6 “Tragic”. Conductor: Pietari Inkinen, Michael Fowler Centre, June 10. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere MAHLER’S Symphony No. 6 is a big work requiring close to 100 players so the NZSO’s… Continue

• Great entertainment

  At the movies with Dan Slevin I’VE been busy over the last few weeks working on New Zealand’s biggest participatory film event,the V 48 Hours.It’s a wonderful celebration of Wellington film talent. One of the inspirations for 48 Hours is… Continue

• Homage to rugby

  C’mon Black! Downstage Theatre, to July 2. Directed by Andrew Foster. Reviewed by Lynn Freeman “GREAT play – if only there could have been a different ending”, was the response from my rugby mad companion, who relived with Dickie Hart… Continue

• Intriguing theatre

  Sheep, Long Cloud Youth Theatre Company, Bats Theatre, to June 11. Reviewed by Lynn Freeman. SHEEP have fed, clothed, carpeted and fuelled our economy for almost 200 years now. They outnumber us, though not by as much as they used to. Arthur Meek traces the… Continue

• More than a sketch

  Sketch, New Zealand School of Dance Choreographic Season, Te Whaea. Reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant SKETCH  is a performance made up of ten works by ten young dancers in their annual choreographic exploration as students of the New Zealand School of Dance.… Continue

• Booming musical theatre

  Boomers Behaving Badly, Jane Keller with Michael Nicholas, Williams on piano, Circa Two, to June 11. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere. THIS intriguing show had its successful genesis at the St James Theatre Cabaret Season last year. Streamlined, tightened and fine-tuned… Continue

• Germanic Eroica

  Eroica, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Michael Fowler Centre, May 21. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere. I’M not sure why there was such a large audience. Maybe the Beethoven, maybe the cellist, but there was, and they were very appreciative. I can’t… Continue

• We know where this bird’s going

  The Bird Song, Hawthorn Lounge, to May 28. Reviewed by Lynn Freeman AROHA White is a talented actress, she has a singing voice that’s easy on the ear, and she has devised a work for this space specifically The story she tells and sings in a taut 40 minutes… Continue

• Music drives the night

  Stravinsky Selection, The Royal New Zealand Ballet, St James Theatre, May 20, Reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant. CELEBRATING Stravinsky with three ballets in one ambitious evening promised the excitement and inventiveness that Stravinsky injected into the musical… Continue

• Young players shine

  New Zealand School of Music Orchestra, May 14, Wellington Youth Orchestra May 15, St Andrew’s on The Terrace, Reviewed by Garth Wilshere LAST weekend was an exciting opportunity to hear two orchestras of young players. On Saturday night the New Zealand… Continue

• Deeply satisfying

  The Lead Wait Circa Theatre, to June 10 Reviewed by Craig Beardsworth Be warned, if you want a rollicking, jolly night out at the theatre then this might not be for you. There is nudity, strong language and raw subject matter. But if you want a deeply satisfying… Continue

• Glee misses

  USO. Directed by Michelle Johansson Downstage Theatre, May 5-7 Reviewed by Lynn Freeman BEWARE of how you market yourself – USO is not ‘Glee meets Boyz in the Hood’. It is a story from the streets of South Auckland addressing drugs, redundancy,… Continue

• Exciting new quartet

  Puertas Quartet, The Hunter Concert Series, New Zealand School of Music Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University, May 5. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere THIS was the second String Quartet concert in three days and the third concert featuring new or young players.… Continue

• Three of our own

  At the movies with Dan Slevin I was expecting to come out of Operation 8 fired up but instead I emerged depressed and dispirited. I knew that New Zealand’s default political setting was benign complacency but I hadn’t realised that the full… Continue

• Mixed night of music making

  Vector Wellington Orchestra, “Launching Mozart” Soloist:  Diedre Irons (piano) and The Cantoris Choir Conductor – Marc Taddei Wellington Town Hall, April 16 Reviewed by Garth Wilshere THE highlight of the Vector Wellington Orchestra’s… Continue

• Popera with Marvelly

  The Home Tour, Elizabeth Marvelly  (soprano), The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Conducted by Carl Doy, Michael Fowler Centre 13 April 2011. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere. THIS seemed an unusual undertaking for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra as the… Continue

• St Matthew Passion

  J. S. Bach – “St Matthew Passion”, Orpheus Choir, Choristers of Wellington Cathedral of St Paul, soloists, Vector Wellington Orchestra, Conductor Michael Fulcher, Town Hall 10 April 2011, Reviewed by Garth Wilshere St Matthew Passion was… Continue

• Tour de force at Circa

  August: Osage County, Directed by Susan Wilson, Circa Theatre, Reviewed by Lynn Freeman Before you get distracted from reading this review - SEE THIS PLAY! Or else! The ‘or else’ being that you will miss out on a tour de force (I’ve always… Continue

• On the dark side

  Capital E National Arts, Festival, reviewed by Lynn Freeman and Rose (12) Last week most of the shows were for the littlies, this week it’s more aimed at teenagers. Just as tough a crowd. The three shows I got to with Rose were all on the dark side… Continue

• Thoughtful NZSO

  New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Conductor - Pietari Inkinen, Michael Fowler Centre, March 25. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere. THE first major subscription concert of the year had a virtually full house with long queues for tickets when I arrived, a great start.… Continue

• Handel with care

  Handel’s Xerxes, NBR New Zealand Opera, St James Theatre Wellington, March 15. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere. WHAT a treat this production of Handel’s Xerxes was. A co-production between Victorian Opera, and NBR New Zealand Opera, this was a colourful… Continue

• Gasping and sighing

  Capital E National Arts Festival. Reviewed by Lynn Freeman (with advice from Ethan 4 and Adam 16) HEAT to See is the big ticket local production commissioned for Capital E’s Festival. It shows in its setting – the Opera House – and execution… Continue

• Farr out

  Gareth Farr’s drumdrag, Downstage Theatre, March 11 Reviewed by Garth Wilshere It has been nine years since ‘our’ classical composer Gareth Farr has performed his show ‘drumdrag’ as his alter-ego drag queen Lilith LaCroix. As… Continue

• Dressed in greene

  Our Man in Havana, Directed by Ross Jolly, Circa Theatre, Reviewed by Lynn Freeman GRAHAM Greene’s novel about a hapless vacuum salesman recruited by the British secret service in Cuba is somehow timely given the current unrest in the Middle East. Wormold’s… Continue

• Chinese draw-card

  Postcards from Exotic Places – A Chinese New Year Concert, Michael Fowler Centre 29 January 2011, Reviewed by Garth Wilshere. YOUNG Chinese violinist and highly regarded Naxos recording artist Tiawa Yang was the major draw-card for Postcards from Exotic… Continue

• A thespian at your table

  Etiquette, Matterhorn Cafe, Reviewed (and performed) by Lynn Freeman THEATRE reviewers have to come up with an entirely different vocabulary to describe Etiquette. European company Rotozaza came up with the idea of a show where audience participation is… Continue

• Camping crammed

  The Motor Camp, Directed by Danny Mulheron, Circa Theatre, Reviewed by Lynn Freeman The summer holiday exodus sees thousands of Kiwis leave their own piece of paradise to get away from it all – and end up crammed into camping grounds cheek by jowl with other… Continue

• Too full

  No Taste Forever, Directed by David Lawrence, Bats Theatre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman The West’s obsession with food is reflected on our screens – endless cooking shows and reality programmes about obesity interspersed with ads showing starving children in… Continue

• From There to Here

  TIMES are tough and historically, tough times produce a will to identify and to belong. The arts play a fundamental role in this defining process for us as people and as a country. 2010 has been a good year for dance with performance standing alongside a burgeoning… Continue

• Theatre’s highs and lows

  SOME years you just know will stick in your mind, no matter how many more hundreds of shows you will see in the future. 2010 is one of those magic years. Most of the Chapman Tripp Theatre Award judges went into the voting process with over subscribed lists of… Continue

• Bach in style

  Bach Christmas Oratorio, Tudor Consort, Vector Wellington Orchestra, conductor – Michael Stewart, soloists – Anna Leese, Kate Spence, David Hamilton, Jared Holt, Wellington Town Hall, December 18, reviewed by Garth Wilshere TUDOR Consort presented one of the… Continue

• Not a festive end

  NZSO Christmas Concert, Aivale Cole (soprano), conductor Paul Goodwin, Michael Fowler Centre, December 9, reviewed by Garth Wilshere THIS was a curious concert most of the audience seemed bemused. The instrumental pieces were not especially engaging and clearly… Continue

• Something was missing

  Handel’s Messiah, Orpheus Choir, soloists, Vector Wellington Orchestra players, conductor – Michael Fulcher, Wellington Town Hall, December 4, reviewed by Garth Wilshere I WAS really looking forward to this Messiah. The large choir sang very well with clean… Continue

• Not for the faint of heart

  Christ Almighty!, directed by Sophie Roberts, Bats Theatre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman OMG! An irreverent retelling of the nativity as seen through the eyes an innkeeper who’s reminiscent of good old Chloe (as played by Sophie Hambleton), of a smoking, swearing… Continue

• A pleasure to watch

  The Height of the Eiffel Tower, directed by Abigail Greenwood, Bats Theatre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman. ‘THIS show comes from the bottom of our really big hearts’ is one of the director’s handwritten comments in the programme and that encapsulates a lot that… Continue

• Change on the wind

  The Winds of Change, presented by The Caprice Arts Trust, St Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt, November 16, reviewed by Garth Wilshere. THIS was the last concert of the year promoted by The Caprice Arts Trust, run and managed by Sunniva Zoete-West, dedicated to providing… Continue

• School in good heart

  KYLIAN and KIWI, Graduation performance by the New Zealand School of Dance, Te Whaea November 17 and 18, reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant. THIS year there are two performances for the students to show their abilities. A real pleasure to see a body of four works… Continue

• Epic Passion

  The Ragged, St Patrick’s College Theatre, directed by Jim Moriarty, reviewed by Lynn Freeman. JIM Moriarty may never win an Oscar or get a knighthood for his contribution to the arts, but he is exactly the kind of guy who should. When the at risk young people… Continue

• The unmighty harpsichord

  Vector Wellington Orchestra, Conductor Marc Taddei with Donald Nicolson (harpsichord) and Douglas Mews (organ), Wellington Town Hall, November 13, reviewed by Garth Wilshere THIS final concert in the Vector Wellington Orchestra’s 2010 season ended in resounding… Continue

• Robin still dashing in the hood

  Robin Hood The Pantomime, directed by Susan Wilson, Circa Theatre, reviewed by Rose Burgess (12) and Lynn Freeman (a bit older) THIS, Roger Hall tells me, is his last panto after making the British theatre tradition a Christmas treat over here. Robin Hood… Continue

• Heart strings

  New Zealand String Quartet with Michael Houstoun (piano) and Michael Steer (double-bass) – touring for Chamber Music New Zealand, Wellington Town Hall, October 28, reviewed by Garth Wilshere THIS is Chamber Music New Zealand’s 60th anniversary year and to… Continue

• Telling lies for money

  Me and Robert McKee, Circa Theatre, reviewed by Michael Wray THE Me in Me and Robert McKee is Billy Dolan. Embittered by the loss of his wife to another man, Billy is now cohabiting with his old friend Mac. It’s an odd couple scenario; the two have little… Continue

• Mankind's clever step

  Apollo 13: Mission Control, Downstage Theatre, reviewed by Robyn Gallagher “APOLLO 13: Mission Control” with its clever combination of comedy, drama and aerospace engineering is back, at Downstage Theatre. The theatre space has been stripped of its regular… Continue

• A cracker

  The Nutcracker The Royal New Zealand Ballet, St James, reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant ‘A TALE with a twist’ is the sub-title of this revisit to Garry Harris’ Nutcracker production first seen here in 2005 and restaged as a farewell season as Harris leaves the… Continue

• Stab commissions sharp act

  Gene Pool, directed by Cara Brockliss, Bats Theatre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman YOU come to expect the unexpected when it comes to STAB commissioned shows and Gene Pool is one of the most surprising – in the best possible of ways – shows in recent years.… Continue

• Good company

  Toi Cabaret: Company (Stephen Sondheim), Toi Whakaari second year students, Museum Hotel, reviewed by Garth Wilshere THIS year Stephen Sondheim is 80. He’s had a theatre named after him on Broadway, and New Zealand has seen four productions of his groundbreaking… Continue

• New eyes for cricketers

  A Tingling Catch, A century of New Zealand cricket poems, 1864-2009, edited by Mark Pirie, published by HeadworX, 2010, 189pp, reviewed by Martin Doyle IF you’re one of those readers who’s been waiting patiently on the boundary for a juicy literary gimme… Continue

• Deadly relevance

  Deadly, directed by Deborah Pope, Downstage Theatre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman ROMEO and Juliet set in a circus ring – and the two young lovers’ bodies passed over each other through a trapeze hoop in an anguishingly fleeting and intimate moment. It’s one… Continue

• In praise of the Opera

  Verdi Macbeth, NBR New Zealand Opera, St James Theatre, October 9-16, reviewed by Garth Wilshere NBR New Zealand Opera productions have progressed steadily over the past couple of years and this presentation of Tim Albery’s original Opera North production… Continue

• Boogie on Jan

  Jan Preston’s Life and Music of Winifred Atwell, St James Theatre, reviewed by Garth Wilshere ANOTHER of the innovative St James Cabaret shows was this delightful afternoon tea event. Perfectly pitched to the mostly elderly audience of predominately women,… Continue

• Court without words

  Resolve, directed by Nicola Clements, Bats Theatre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman FIVE people walked out of Resolve within the first ten minutes the night I was there. Perhaps they couldn’t handle the noise and how hard it was to hear what was being said. If so… Continue

• Feng Ning stands out

  1910 - Firebird, Vector Wellington Orchestra, Wellington Town Hall, reviewed by Garth Wilshere. AUDIENCES demonstrated their support for Vector Wellington Orchestra by turning out in large numbers for this concert, which coincided with the 60th anniversary… Continue

• Moved by father

  Father Familiar, directed by Stephanie McKellar-Smith, Bats Theatre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman JOHN Bach and Mel Dodge, breathing life into the words of Branwen Millar’s script, remind us of the heartbreak that comes for children as their parents age and ail.… Continue

• A matter of interpretation

  New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Michael Fowler Centre, reviewed by Garth Wilshere There was a big turnout for this concert with younger people no doubt attracted by percussion soloist, Edinburgh-born Colin Currie. He performed the Percussion Concerto, written… Continue

• In with the old

  Trinity Roots, Music is Choice, reviewed by Hannah Spyksma I love TrinityRoots but their new live album is dull. The trio’s two recorded albums, True and Home, Land and Sea, have an energy designed to move the CD forward, drawing listeners in. Music is Choice,… Continue

• Hot, hot, hot

  Cirque Mother Africa, St James Theatre, reviewed by Rebekah Burgess FORTY Africans bouncing around on stage, twisting and turning and gyrating to the music of their continent is the thing to see on a Friday night. One word – hot. Cirque Mother Africa was… Continue

• Lovely and disappointing

  New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Alexander Shelley, with percussion soloist  Colin Currie, Michael Fowler Centre, reviewed by Garth Wilshere THERE was a big turnout for this concert and younger people were no doubt attracted by percussionist… Continue

• Cheers to Fulcher

  J S Bach: Mass in B minor, Orpheus Choir and soloists, Vector Wellington Orchestra, conducted by ­Michael Fulcher, reviewed by Garth Wilshere THE Bach Mass in B minor is one of the great choral works and the Orpheus Choir did it proud in an impassioned performance.… Continue

• Driven to distraction

  Distraction Camp, directed by Peter Falkenberg, Bats Theatre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman ON the day of the Christchurch earthquake, this visiting Christchurch Free Theatre company was the epitome of the saying ‘the show must go on’. The players were all affected… Continue

• Stroma scores

  Stroma – Living Toys, 10 Year Anniversary Concert, Ilott Theatre, reviewed by Garth Wilshere I first reviewed Stroma at the time of their inception 10 years ago and they remain at the top as a cutting-edge contemporary music ensemble. This innovative concert… Continue

• Disappointing Bat

  Die Fledermaus, Wellington G&S Light Opera, Opera House, reviewed by Garth Wilshere THIS year the Wellington G&S Light Opera tackled Viennese operetta in the popular Johan Strauss II work Die Fledermaus (The Bat). This is a difficult repertoire while… Continue

• Poor theatre at its best

  Shipwrecked!, directed by Peter Hambleton, Circa Two, reviewed by Lynn Freeman WOULDN’T the world be a boring place if the truth was always clear cut? We need people like Louis de Rougemont – a real life 19th century adventurer/self promoter who was very… Continue

•  

  Jolie Average

  At the movies, with Dan Slevin IF I had to use a four letter word starting in “S” and ending in “T” to describe the new Angelina Jolie thriller, Salt wouldn’t be the first word I would think of. The last time Ms Jolie played an action heroine she was a weaver/assassin… Continue

• French Connection

  FED UP with New Zealand’s theatre scene, Kiwi performer Nick Blake left the country. His first stop was England, but after two years he felt he had to move again. “In the 1970s Kiwi theatre was derived from English theatre, [both were] very text based and wordy,”… Continue

• Magnificent Monteverdi

  Musica Sacra – Monteverdi Vespers, conducted by Robert Oliver, St Mary of The Angels, reviewed by Garth Wilshere TO hear Monteverdi’s Vespers, almost exactly 400 years after it was written (in 1610), was a life-affirming event. This was director Robert… Continue

• Silent murder hard to watch

  The December Brother, directed by Tim Spite, Downstage Theatre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman A SeeYd production is always an event. For more than 10 years the company has held true to its belief that theatre should be meaningful and provocative, and that it… Continue

• Song's praises sung

  Parlour Song, directed by Susan Wilson, Circa Two, reviewed by Lynn Freeman YOU can see playwright Jez Butterworth’s reverence for Pinter in the fractured dialogue and oddness of the story. It’s done well, mind you, a homage from a skilled young writer who… Continue

• New heights for Catherine

  Pianist Catherine Norton’s Farewell Concert, St Andrew’s on the Terrace, reviewed by Garth Wilshere PIANIST Catherine Norton will be greatly missed. The well-known and respected accompanist is off to study at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.… Continue

• Ugly unitard appeal

  The Fierceness - Real Hot Bitches, Downstage Theatre, reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant THIS was so appalling it was actually appealing. A partisan audience greeted friends in the cast by name with cat calls and encouragement. Onstage The Real Hot Bitches (27 including… Continue

• The Red Violin

  The Red Violin, New Zealand School of Music Orchestra, Wellington Town Hall 30 July, reviewed by Garth Wilshere. AIMED at showcasing performers and tutors from the New Zealand School of Music concert opened ambitiously with the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s… Continue

• A future at stake

  Vector Wellington Orchestra, Wellington Town Hall, July 24, 7.30pm, reviewed by Garth Wilshere THE Creative New Zealand paper released this week looks at reorganising the funding it gives to the Vector Wellington Orchestra and other major arts bodies around… Continue

• Marvellous

  Josef  Špaček (violin) and Michael Houstoun (piano), Wellington Town Hall 5 July reviewed by Garth Wilshere. THE brilliant 23 year old Czech violinist Josef Špaček who won the Michael Hill International Violin Competition last year performed with the… Continue

• The best of the bunch

  Young & Hungry, Bats Theatre, reviewed by Adam Burgess (15) and Lynn Freeman (a bit older). THIS is one of the best crop of Young & Hungry shows in its 16 year history – I reckon I can say that having seen almost every single one. They get the tick… Continue

• Gripping and unsettling

  Mauritius, directed by Ross Jolly, Circa Theatre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman A death in the family brings out the best or worst in people, and Theresa Rebeck takes the latter tack in her comedy/suspense. Here two half-sisters, one sent away who then chose… Continue

• Rock a Bill

  Bill Bailey – Live, Michael Fowler Centre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman. MAD hair, bulging eyes, very fine musician, the only lovable character on the TV show Black Books, and a comedian popular enough to book out the Michael Fowler Centre, not once, but twice.… Continue

• Sounds exotic

  New Zealand String Quartet and Richard Mapp (piano), Wellington Chamber Music Society, Illott Theatre 20 June 2010, reviewed by Garth Wilshere. THIS was another successful Sunday afternoon chamber music concert. The New Zealand String Quartet beguiled us… Continue

• A rich performance

  New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Michael Fowler Centre 12 June 2010, reviewed by Garth Wilshere CONDUCTOR Alexander Lazarev always whips up a storm in his concerts in New Zealand and this time with popular pianist Freddy Kempf, who had impressed on his last… Continue

• Natural and charming

  Venetian Carnival with The Wallfisch Band, Chamber Music New Zealand, Wellington Town Hall, reviewed by Garth Wilshere. THIS was a Chamber Music New Zealand innovation and proved a most interesting concept. The Wallfisch Band, Elizabeth Wallfisch; violin… Continue

• A stiff drink

  The Davenport Files, by Philip Marshall, Riverstone Books, review by Abby Cunnane. IT’S not uncommon for a novel to give you the sense of eavesdropping on a conversation. At best this is delightful, absolving you of all need to participate, or feel guilty,… Continue

• Best years back

  Te Kaupoi, BATS Theatre, Reviewed by Lynn Freeman. THIS production feels like a flashback to the best years of Taki Rua, when we were regularly treated to gutsy, meaningful and unashamedly political Maori plays. Whiti Hereaka integrates the recent so called… Continue

• A top note

  Footnote Dance’s Made in New Zealand, The Opera House, May 26, reviewed by Lyne Pringle. FOOTNOTE Dance Company gets better and better. Their NZ Made Season at the Wellington Opera House has become a must see event on the capital’s cultural calendar, and… Continue

• A brave piece

  Lullaby Jock, Directed by Tim Spite, Downstage Theatre, Reviewed by Lynn Freeman. ONE of the great sadnesses in families is when children don’t get to know about their parents when they were young and full of ideals and promise. As kids we can be so… Continue

• A bright future

  One Way, New Zealand School of Dance Student Choreographic Season, At Te Whaea, May 22,  Reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant. AN empty space, dimly lit with a scaffolding structure. The stage fills with students in a melange of style and clothing. Retro is… Continue

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  Crazy in New Zealand

  ONE joined a circus at age 15 – the other can’t get enough of gift-wrapping. Both are top-notch dancers. Lucy Marinkovich and Robbie Curtis are the newbies at Footnote Dance Studios, and already they’re set to perform at the Shanghai World Expo in July. Before… Continue

• Distracting visuals

  In a New Light – Made in New Zealand, NZSO, Wellington Town Hall 7 May, reviewed by Garth Wilshere. THE annual Made in New Zealand Concert from the NZSO during New Zealand Music Month had a twist this year, in accompanying visual images prepared by Dnation… Continue

• Go to the Final

  At the movies with Dan Slevin WITH the big budget Hollywood remake already in production (starring Rusty Crowe), Anything for Her looked like it might have had some entertainment potential but I’m sad to report that it never gets up to speed. The blissful… Continue

• Bold Binge Culture

  Elimination Rounds, directed by Joel Baxendale and Ralph Upton, Bats Theatre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman THIS company of Gen Ys is producing the kind of theatre that speaks directly to its peers. The actors cast a cynical eye at themselves and others, at media… Continue

• Devilishly good

  Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, and Los Amigos Invisibles, Pacific Blue Festival Club, reviewed by Garth Wilshere AFTER the recent “Southerly Buster” storm had quietened I ventured to The Pacific Blue Festival Club for the deliciously, dark quirky… Continue

• Kisses in the theatre

  From Here to There, The Royal New Zealand Ballet, St James Theatre, reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant ENDING their triple bill tour in Wellington in order not to conflict with the NZ International Arts Festival has worked well for the Royal New Zealand Ballet.… Continue

• Doubly good

  The Second Test, directed by Andrew Foster and Toby Leach, Skungpoomery, directed by Phoebe Smith, Bats Theatre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman AFTER the Fringe and International Arts Festivals, critics really want a cup of tea and a lie down for a few weeks.… Continue

• Music starred

  Good Morning, Mr Gershwin, St James Theatre, reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant THIS show is primarily the work of Jose Montalvo and Dominique Hervieu blending their strengths in much the same way that George Gershwin did when he changed the musical palette of… Continue

• Haunting farce

  The Walworth Farce, The Opera House, reviewed by Lynn Freeman WHEN a farce ends with an image so sad it haunts you, you know you have experienced something remarkable.   The Walworth Farce, an Irish Edinburgh Fringe Award winning production, was most… Continue

• Happy and effective

  Happy as Larry, TSB Arena, reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant THIS high-action, high-colour work began with an intriguing and universal premise that “happiness is our most singular human pursuit” and it is an objective to explore human happiness. Nine performers… Continue

• Surreal and spontaneous

  Connan Mockasin, San Francisco Bathhouse, reviewed by Janina Nicoll CONNAN Mockasin’s debut album Please Turn Me Into The Snat requires some research, and an imagination. According to online reports by Kyle Hugall, the alleged main “snat” who wanders onstage… Continue

• Mostly good

  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.… Continue

• What a bargain

  New Zealand International Arts Festival. Sutra, St James Theatre, March 3rd, and Echoa, Soundings Theatre, March 7, reviewed by Deirdre Tarrant. A great idea having all the dance programmes in one place with the Festival dance works all bound together –… Continue

• Byrd song

  The Tudor Consort, Sacred Heart Cathedral, reviewed by Garth Wilshere IN this first concert of the choral year, The Tudor Concert made glorious sound from just 10 voices. The clarity of vocal line was impressive as they sang a selection of motets from 16th… Continue

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  Bloody good

  AC/DC, Shihad, The Checks, Westpac Stadium, reviewed by Dawn Tratt “IS there blood on my face?” a guy asked my mate before AC/DC started playing. Not only was there a circle of blood seeping from his cheek, but the wound was surrounded by little teeth marks.… Continue

• 90 minutes with the ex

  Ninety, directed by Susan Wilson, Circa Two, reviewed by Lynn Freeman THE death of a child is every parent’s nightmare and that makes it potentially powerful theatre. It’s well covered territory, including Carl Nixon’s The Raft which was seen in Wellington… Continue

• Camp times

  Campus A Low Hum, Flock House, Bulls, reviewed by Dawn Tratt BLINK is a genius. The Wellington-based events manager, photographer and editor, born Ian Jorgensen and now known by everyone as Blink, has helped put Wellington on the map by pioneering a unique… Continue

• Can you Handel?

  Handel’s Messiah, conducted by Guy Jansen, Sacred Heart Cathedral, reviewed by Garth Wilshere THIS year’s Messiah in Wellington was an imported presentation from the Kapiti Chamber Choir. This performance was augmented by former members and friends of Bel… Continue

• Too much

  Gas, directed by Conrad Newport, Bats Theatre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman THIS is a case of too many characters and too many themes crammed into too short a time. The programme lists the themes: sect-based religion, immigration, solo-parenting, sexual identity… Continue

• St James turns cabaret

  Jane Keller, with Carey MacDonald on piano, Cabaret St James Theatre, reviewed by Garth Wilshere IT was enterprising of the St James Theatre to turn their upstairs gallery space into an intimate cabaret venue for four nights. With seating, candle-lit tables,… Continue

• Loud music

  Dick Whittington and His Cat, directed by Susan Wilson, Circa Theatre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman ROGER Hall, panto, Circa. A winning end of year combination for the past few years and with big houses. It is again. Dick Whittington is a much less known story… Continue

• Brilliant death

  Death and the Dreamlife of Elephants, directed by Leo Gene Peters, Bats Theatre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman THIS second of Bat’s commissioned STAB productions has had maximum hype, with masses of pre-show marketing – on radio, in print, on Twitter, on the streets,… Continue