I can’t help but immediately compare Sweet Magnolias to Virgin River. Both are romantic Netflix dramas set in small-town America and star a very attractive red head who loses her husband but finds solace in other relationships. Both also feature a rather dishy male love interest, which might explain why I binged them in a few days. Where Sweet Magnolias doesn’t beat Virgin River is in its exploration of grief. Where it does better is in its celebration and elevation of female friendships.

Maddie Townsend (JoAnna Garcia Swisher) divorces Bill (Chris Klein) after he gets nurse Noreen (Jamie Lynn Spears) pregnant. With three kids between them, Maddie’s world is turned upside down – especially when Bill announces he’s marrying Noreen. For me, Swisher’s wooden performance is what lets Sweet Magnolias down. Her limited emotional range means I don’t believe her character’s response to this trauma. Maddie’s arc is more like a flat line; she even looks a little bored during a steamy sex scene with Coach Cal (Justin Bruening).

Luckily, Swisher is supported by two fantastic actors, Heather Headley as lawyer Helen Decatur and Brooke Elliott as chef Dana Sue Sullivan. Headley carries the emotional weight of the season with a gut-wrenching portrayal of a woman scorned, while Elliott’s giggly flirt fest with a hot guy who’s got a nice car practically steals the show. The chemistry between the three leads is real and palpable; while I didn’t always buy into Swisher’s solo performance, I believed and cherished the heartfelt connection between these characters. The love between them is accentuated by pretty cinematography (Brian Johnson) and soft lighting, almost as if they glow when they’re together.

Sweet Magnolias is the kind of programme you can pop on in the background while baking brownies. You won’t be glued to the screen, but you’ll find its sweetness sneaking up on you until suddenly, you’re hooked. Though unexpected for an otherwise slow-building show, the cliff-hanger ending surely means a second season is in store. I for one will be tuning in.

Knives Out is a good-old-fashioned whodunit, complete with the bloody murder of a family patriarch, an endless list of motivated suspects, a smooth detective, and more twists than one cares to count. It is mystery in its purest and most entertaining form.

While police rule the dramatic death of well-known crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) a suicide, private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) receives an anonymous payment that urges him to think otherwise. As Blanc investigates, conflicts within the Thrombey family are brought to light, and everyone becomes a suspect.

After his experience making Star Wars: The Last Jedi, it’s clear writer and director Rian Johnson wanted to make a subversive follow up. The whodunit genre is inherently captivating, but risky – a switched-on audience will see right through any plot holes and call BS on any sudden deus ex machina.

Thankfully, Johnson did his homework. His screenplay and direction are tightly linked to deliver the right information at just the right time; a trail of breadcrumbs designed to ensure maximum impact to the audience. Editor Bob Ducsay is also crucial in this success. As we are tossed around time to achieve the aforementioned impact, Ducsay’s cuts keep the pace and maintain the plot’s intelligence.

If Johnson and Ducsay carry the film’s structure, the cast is certainly responsible for injecting an unabashed sense of fun. Craig chews scenery with glee. Ana de Armas, playing Harlan’s private nurse and confidant Marta Cabrera, brings necessary heart and warmth to the screen amongst a sea of cold, manipulative players. Standouts in the supporting cast include Jamie Lee Curtis as Harlan’s resilient, no-nonsense daughter Linda and Chris Evans as his spoilt grandson.

While the story and characters endow Knives Out with joy, the film doesn’t consistently seize opportunities to innovate visually beyond some well-timed blocking and the odd dolly zoom. However, Johnson’s direction is poised. Not a second of screen time is wasted, constantly building towards what is a satisfying conclusion to a truly grand mystery.

Simplistic in its design, brilliant in its execution, Sorry For Your Loss is a play with an incentive of teaching the viewer about the importance of chosen identity. The story follows Cian Gardner’s upbringing and her search for acceptance in the void that is left by an absent father. Filled with humour and sincerity, Dr Laura Haughey directs Sorry For Your Loss in such a way that Gardner’s story becomes entrenched in our minds in the days following the initial performance.

At the dimming of the lights, Gardner enters the stage to immediately interact with the audience. She makes use of her acting space and stands right against the front row, slowly scanning over the filled seats to talk about how she “could use a drink herself”. Within the first five minutes, she is able to both ease the viewers with her wit and create a space of suspenseful expectation. The comfortably informal atmosphere that the actress creates from her entrance continues throughout the entire performance. As the plot unravels, Gardner beautifully characterises each individual in her story with realistic posturing and mannerisms.

The simplicity of the set design is made into a visual spectacle with the use of lighting by Alec Forbes. He changes the size of space it focuses on, providing various dimensions for Gardner to act in. And the near bare stage comes alive with an atmosphere that can only be created through Andy Duggan’s music. From filling the space with comfortable tunes to creating tension with the echoing sound of one key, Duggan sets the mood for the entire story.

Sorry For Your Loss teaches us what it means to be a wāhine toa. Gardner’s story makes you laugh hysterically upon entry and tear up as you leave. From her colourful recollections of her childhood to a tumultuous inner conflict, the whole play exudes a genuine warmth that touches all those who are present.

The last slapstick performance that I saw was The Suitcase Royale in 2014, which rendered me speechless with its inventive storyline, wisecracks, prat falls, and sound effects. Tonight, is no different. It’s a nigh lost artform; this is frantic mayhem writ large.

In many respects Släpstick is more of a tribute to musical theatre than pure slapstick, which would have run its course after several sketches. Over an hour and a half (and there wouldn’t have been a member of the audience who didn’t think they got their money’s worth), we were treated to a run of ageless classics from the roaring 20s right through to Queen.

We are told that the Släpstick company plays over 100 instruments, and it seemed as if they brought out every one for a tootle. Accordion, guitars, double bass, banjo, trombone, keyboards, percussion, pan flutes, saxophones of every key, and violin. I lost count after that.

It’s an honour and a privilege to be in the company of a company who keep the tradition of deadpan humour alive whilst remembering the music of the likes of Kurt Weill and Charlie Chaplin. Songs such as Smile, The Man I Love, Harvest Moon, O Sole Mio, are real highlights, especially Unforgettable, in which the singer can’t recall what comes after ‘Un’.

Did I mention Swan Lake? The black-and-white silent film The Lady with the Dog with the time-honoured dastardly villain? Then there is the fairground spiv who makes several appearances enticing the audience to throw the ball at cans, catch a magnetic fish (there was a massive cheer when a lady caught one), and shoot at a cymbal. Classic.

Two favourites then: Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head sung in German, and three sets of buskers – one group playing pan flutes that bought the house down – all playing different tunes but overcoming everything to play together.

It’s a performance of almost balletic proportions, so fluid is the movement that the obvious setting up of a skit is never seen.

Shows like this make me want to run away and join the circus.

It’s impossible not to get excited knowing Aldous Harding is returning to Wellington soil for the New Zealand Festival of the Arts. Homegrown music shines in a night tied together by a rolling tide of vibrato, and the intersection of folkloric fantasies and the late-night ruminations from a house party.

The night is ushered in by New Zealand up-and-comers Purple Pilgrims. The sister act has the task of turning the corporate Michael Fowler centre into the appropriate setting for a night of psychedelic indie folk, and Clementine and Valentine Nixon delve into it with total commitment. Their lush tones and layered electronic tunes create an atmosphere reminiscent of Tolkien’s elvish realms.

Weyes Blood follows, and if Purple Pilgrims took us on a journey to fairyland, our American act plants us on more solid ground. Natalie Mering has the confidence and wry comedic stage presence of a classic crooner with the vocal power to match as she delivers her ‘sad cowboy songs’. Weyes Blood makes the perfect centrepiece for the night, and one we are lucky to be experiencing in the midst of COVID-19 related cancellations.

Rather than transport us to other realms, Aldous Harding feels more like the fae who has travelled here to deign us with a visit. While in reality she is from Lyttelton, her impressive vocal range – which deftly switches from deep resonance to light and husky – implies a creature otherworldly. Combined with an almost clown-like stage presence, the result is intense and captivating.

Nothing bonds an audience and performer quite like the raw, exposed nerve of something going wrong – and tonight, it does. Do we like to see a talented performer being put through their paces, or does empathy make us want to help out in the only way we know how – excessive applause? Either way, those unplanned, off-the-cuff moments created by technical mishaps make room for a one-off magical experience that leaves no one feeling disappointed.

An ingenious combination of mime and puppetry, film and soundscape, Dimanche is a production about climate change. Over a series of vignettes, we follow different species as they struggle to survive in an apocalyptic world. A polar bear and its cub, a bird and its baby, and a human film crew and family are all performed or brought to life by Christine Heyraud and Dimanche’s creators Sicaire Durieux and Sandrine Heyraud.

Dimanche is world-class stage sorcery. Scale and perspective are concepts to be toyed with, not adhered to. For instance – and this is just one of the many examples of sheer brilliance on display here – a toy car drives along the hilly contours of a human body. All of a sudden, audiences are transported inside the car itself, where windscreen wipers and a wheel create an entirely believable reality. Brice Cannavo’s sound design hits the illusion home, transitioning from music as it would sound inside the car to the way someone might hear it outside. Guillaume Toussaint Fromentin’s lighting design more than supports the magic; at times, it creates it. For the car scene, an overhead ceiling light shrouds the rest of the stage in pitch black emptiness – a convention that’s repeated to breathtaking effect when an entire house is drowned by a tsunami.

Waw ! Studios and Joachim Jannin have created outstanding puppets, including a life-sized polar bear and a grandma so detailed I initially thought she was real. A bit with this puppet and a dodgy stairlift is a comedic highlight of the show.

Beneath the whimsy and joy, Dimanche carries a dire warning. Earth is a ticking time bomb, and it’s entirely our fault. What’s more, we’ll do everything in our power to ignore the consequences of our actions. We might even, quite literally, eat a roast chicken in the eye of the storm.

Dimanche should be shown – even taught – in all schools, lecture halls, and workplaces. Its message is clear, but never has it been so deafening.

The Wellington arts community is small and largely independent, so it’s a coup to have a place in an international arts festival, even more so when you’re just starting to cut your teeth with New Zealand audiences. This can be said for Borderline Arts Ensemble, a dance-theatre collective whose brand-new work Strasbourg 1518 seizes your imagination and emotion with an uncompromising grasp.

Inspired by the stranger-than-fiction dancing plague that gripped hundreds of people in the French city of Strasbourg, Strasbourg 1518 delves into the psychosis of what took place through violently physical dance, haunting live music, and clever narration.

A bold cast of 10 carries the work with their extraordinary passion and relentless talent. The dancers twist and turn frantically through the space, teetering toward madness while the musician (Lucien Johnson) expertly switches between musical instruments, holding the trance with finesse. A narrator (France Herve) structures the story with poetic quips and historical background, soon to become enraptured herself.

Exploring the different theories surrounding the plague of 1518 (poison, fever, the devil), the work spirals into intense physicality and dark social constructs. Lucy Marinkovich’s choreography is meticulous and heaves with ritualism and deep emotion. The dancers weave seamlessly between uninhibited movement and controlled, rhythmic pattern. The presence of traditional folk dance doesn’t go unnoticed and accentuates the versatility of Marinkovich and her fellow artists.

The work is rich with symbolism and self-interpretation and its conclusion is powerfully weighted with themes of compassion and mortality. With bright red shoes upon their feet, the afflicted dancers travel to a mountaintop and meet the gentle embrace of Death, portrayed tenderly by dance legend Michael Parmenter. The final message seems to say, “we will all find peace eventually.”

Strasbourg 1518 pushes the boundaries of what theatre can be and takes no prisoners in coaxing a full range of emotion. While not for the faint of heart, it is a work that needs to be seen beyond its life in the festival.

Trois Grandes Fugues is made up of three distinct choreographic pieces, all with one thing in common: Beethoven’s Die Große Fuge. Trois Grandes Fugues showcases three choreographers’ interpretations of the beloved composition and is executed with finesse by the Lyon Opera Ballet (France).

The evening opens with Lucinda Child’s carefully refined and more restrained interpretation of the three. There is a mathematical accuracy in the work’s construction as a full cast of barefoot dancers cut excellent figures on stage, gliding into technically precise pas de deux and carrying out tight forms of arabesque. Their lithe bodies ripple with musicality and respond tirelessly to a choreography that so easily adapts to the demands of Die Große Fuge.

Anne Teresa de Keermaeker’s work takes a more contemporary tact as the dancers appear on stage dressed in suits and hurl themselves into rolls across the floor. Naked lightbulbs lower themselves from the ceiling and the stark lighting sets a crisp and wonderfully minimalistic scene. As the dancers clamour, weave, and bound in rhythmic patterns, there is no denying the manic energy in this piece and it sits magnificently against Beethoven’s spiky score.

The third and final piece, choreographed by Maguy Marin, is even more contemporary than the last. Four female dancers take to the stage in an embittered battle for survival which heightens the urgency and variance of the music. Through a series of full-weighted tumbles, violent shivers, and jagged body contortions, the women command attention with nihilistic abandon. The core of Marin’s piece is the individual struggle and the dancers rarely come together or perform in unison, but when they do there is a true sense of oneness and triumph.

It may seem like a gamble to base an entire programme on a single piece of music, but the Lyon Opera Ballet and its three choreographers have approached it with dexterity and a strong sense of vision. This in turn has created a dynamic and overall gratifying evening of dance.

Speaking about traumatic grief with eloquence is a hard feat to master, but Jean Sergent’s storytelling is second to none. She hits the mark completely, combining heart-wrenching moments with humour in all the right places. Sergent has me crying more than a few times, but never in a way I feel overwhelmed or uncomfortable; she has perfected the art of not overstepping any boundaries while still capturing the audience’s hearts.

Walking in, I feel at home. The set feels like the bedroom of a well-known friend, with pictures of cats, tarot cards, and gorgeous witchy artwork creating this ambience. No element feels out of place, each pertaining to aspects of Sergent’s “worst year”.

The performance begins with a slight holdup (the usher not turning the house lights off), but after instructing them to do so, Sergent gets the ball rolling immediately, immersing the audience with the courage to open up and be raw. There are a few hiccups throughout, but to me, it only adds to the realness of what is being shared.

At times, some of the story’s elements seem to be brushed over slightly, such as the mentioning of joining a cult. This leaves me wanting to hear more, but of course it is understandably difficult to fit every juicy detail into a one-hour timeframe. It doesn’t affect the power of the show however, and Sergent’s words earn her a well-deserved standing ovation.

Sergent’s heartfelt and humorous list of ways to change your life, hence the title of the show, resonates with me heavily, and gives me a different outlook on my own troubles that I’m very thankful for. Sergent emphasises that despite hardships, you can still create a life you love and want to live.

Sergent leaves the audience with a lot to think about; who are you? Are you where you want to be? And who do you trust to clear out your bedside table when you are gone?