Billy (Cameron Clayton) and Te Po (Jamie McCaskill) are musicians about to smash the biggest night of their lives on a Māori talent show. But backstage before their final performance, the uber-culturally authentic competition has them asking, “Are we Māori enough for this gig?”

Both whakama in their own very different ways, they approach their Māoriness, or lack of, very differently too. For Billy, it’s about trying to do the right thing, whether that’s practising his overly dramatic reo introduction for the show or donning a pounamu. For Te Po, it’s about cynicism and exposing the expected compliance with the vision of ‘being Māori’ that the show espouses. “You be a You Māori. And I’ll be a Me Māori. And Billy will be a Him Māori”, he says and proceeds to make himself deeply unpopular with the producers. That’s just one of the dramas unfolding here as they both have family crises happening in the background that add depth to the significance of the night.

Clayton and McCaskill are a well-matched pair, sparking off each other with an easy chemistry that keeps the energy bubbling. Clayton’s Billy is sweet and well intentioned, though misguided in his priorities. McCaskill’s Te Po is arrogant and reckless, bringing a wrecking ball to the whole enterprise with little thought for the consequences. All of this is delivered with delicious humour from both characters that elevates the deeper issues of colonisation and cultural disconnection from the frippery of the competition.

With six beautiful songs carefully woven into the narrative, Clayton and McCaskill get to show off their musical talents and superb singing voices. They’re well matched in this department too, creating stunning harmonies and playing off each other’s guitar rhythms with expert skill.

Supported by Green’s naturalistic direction, gorgeous lighting (Talya Pilcher), and an attractive woven-panel set (Ian Harman), Two Guitars is a funny, polished, and thoughtful vehicle for showing us that maybe, in Te Po’s words, “If you whakapapa, that’s enough.”

Something is afoot! Inspector Pratt (Harrison Stuart) isn’t quite sure what exactly… or who, or where he is for that matter, and who all these strange people are, but by golly is he determined to find out.

Whatever suspicions Inspector Pratt may harbour, it doesn’t take a professional sleuth to deduce that Wellington Repertory Theatre’s Murdered to Death is the perfect murder mystery farce. Set in 1980’s Auckland, this Agatha Christie spoof is set in the beautiful salon (brilliant set design by Oliver Mander) of Mildred Bagshot (Susannah Donovan). She is excited for the weekend spent in the company of her dearest friends and ever so grateful for her niece’s help – Dorothy Foxton (Talia Carlisle) will be handsomely rewarded in her will for all she does. Her butler Bunting (Vince Jennings) is certainly looking worse for wear though. She is expecting Colonel Charles Craddock (Mike McJorrow) and his wife Margaret (Amy Bradshaw), the highbrow Elizabeth Hartley-Trumpington (Carly Daniels), and French art dealer Pierre Marceau (Finnian Nacey) to arrive any minute. She was not expecting Joan Maple (Brianna McGhie), however, who arrives uninvited – wherever she goes someone always ends up… Murdered to Death!

As the rest of the evening unfolds, the odds seem stacked against Inspector Pratt, whose only hope is his assistant Constable Thompkins (Sonique Paewai) – an endearing and perfectly proficient police officer (and performer, as Paewai quickly becomes my favourite). Seven suspects, each with no alibi. It’s a police PR nightmare.

Intentionally and hilariously over the top, the performers each enact their respective tropes to a T, crying and conniving, berating and blackmailing to their hearts' content under Jamie Byas and Oliver Mander’s tight direction. Carol Walter and Wendy Howard’s wardrobe design is equally as outlandish in the best way possible. With a little more fine-tuning, the lighting design (Brian Byas) could bring the already high tension to knife-cutting levels.

Ladies and gentlemen, Murdered to Death will make you laugh bloody murder.

It Came From Beyond The Script is a horror-comedy spectacular that sees local improv personalities (C B, Dianne Pulham, Jed Davies, Megan Connolly, Sam Irwin, and Tristram Domican) make up a new spooky tale every night from an audience suggestion (a whoop for our co-writer Leon from the crowd).

Lights (D’ Woods), camera, action! This is no ordinary long-form improv show. Stitching theatre and cinema together like Frankenstein’s monster, it features cult-classic horror film tropes, elements of expressionism, extraordinary SFX by Malcolm Morrison, titillating live music by Lia Kelly, and innovative software by Tom Hall. Multi-media sorcery meets multi-fantastic performers and the spell is cast... Our story has begun.

Tonight’s tale? A Cat Named Psycho. That’s the only prompt, and yet the end result is a 45-minute complex tale of an experimental mind-control serum created by a corrupt hospital chief (Davies) and an intern named Grieg (his name is actually Greg) (it was an administrative error) (he doesn’t want to talk about it) (but he will) (at length). (Grieg is played by Irwin.)

Meanwhile, a lovely older couple (C B and Domican) are due in surgery and have been together for 39 years, would you believe! And a doctor and a nurse (Connolly and Pulham) are about to get married and start their own practice, The Doctor Practise Practice. But the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry... especially when feral cat-humanoid soldiers are involved, as the saying goes.

Walking into It Came From Beyond The Script, I was tired, grumpy, and stressed. Walking out, I felt light, free, alive, and full of joy. I laughed till I nearly cried. That’s exactly what good theatre should do: provide an escape from the various abstract horrors of our daily lives.

It Came From Beyond The Script is clever, electrifying, and funny as all hell. Make like a Cat Named Psycho and zoomie, don’t walk to BATS to catch it while you can.

I walk out of the cinema at 10:30am on a Friday morning to a bright and shining blue day. As I wince in the light and warmth of the sun I feel as though I have just come from an arduous albeit cathartic journey. I entered the theatre alone, I left with three beautiful new friends.

The latest heart-warming, tender, and witty Kiwi film is The Mountain, directed and co-written by Rachel House, who adds yet another title to her formidable resume. No stranger to our screens or award ceremonies, House has once again proven herself as a Kiwi filmmaking giant, balancing story, fresh young talent, and weighty themes with mastery in her directorial debut.

The Mountain takes audiences on an adventure alongside Sam (Elizabeth Atkinson), Bronco (Terrence Daniel), and Mallory (Reuben Francis). Strangers at first, the three youngsters embark on a journey to climb Mount Taranaki in search of solace. Under the mountain’s watchful gaze, the trio find healing, the magic of the natural world, and camaraderie.

A love letter to Te Taiao, there are many themes that course through the veins of The Mountain, but my favourite is the celebration of the everyday magic we experience but often take for granted. Through the eyes of children, the magic of our world comes to life fresh, new, and wonderful, blossoming on the screen through native birdsong and twinkling stars, through sticks and stones and stories.

Talking to House (go check out our close-up interview in this edition), I learn that so much attention to detail has been sewn into The Mountain. For example, the sound department recorded birds from around Mount Taranaki, which were then embedded into the narrative.

The incorporation of te reo Māori also brings a smile to my face. As a bilingual speaker, though not of te reo, this small gesture means so much to me. Ingrained fluidly into the film, language becomes another part of the beautiful natural and cultural landscape of The Mountain.

Award-winning Irish theatre maker Dan Colley tells an innovative and powerful story of dealing with advanced dementia. Joy (Venetia Bowe) is stuck in the past of her career as an actor, constantly rehearsing a production of Shakespeare’s King Lear in which she played the lead. This ‘memory theme’ has been painstakingly worked out and supported by Liam (Manus Halligan) and his care home team (Clodagh O’Farrell and Em Ormonde). Into this carefully constructed world comes Joy’s son Conor (Peter Daly) who she sent away as a young boy and consequently harbours a lifetime of resentment towards his neglectful mother. Seeking some kind of apology or contrition he will never get, he must find his own path to forgiveness through joining the rehearsal as Cordelia and becoming part of Joy’s fractured reality.

Using projection onto two screens in front of and behind the main stage interwoven with live video feeds from a lightbox and another on the stage, plus a stunning use of paper craft and puppetry, we witness both Joy’s chaotic, distorted perspective and the grounded, day-to-day work of caring for a person with dementia. The skill of the actors and technicians is such that these two worlds blend and interchange seamlessly, so we always know where we are and sometimes see both at the same time.

Bowe gives a towering performance as Joy. She’s energetic and dictatorial as Lear, humorous as she jumps into other roles and plays dialogue by herself, heartbreaking as she struggles to communicate with Conor through the fog of her illness. Daly is strong too as the baffled son who can’t cope with the feelings welling up as he confronts his estranged mother and her altered mental state. Halligan is a wonderful foil for Joy, gleefully indulging her fantasy by playing Lear’s Fool, and gently encouraging Conor to take part.

Lost Lear is a brilliantly creative and thought-provoking inspection of dementia and the unconventional possibilities of human communication.

Helmed by creative director Malia Johnston – known for her work on World of WearableArt™ and countless other innovative projects – BELLE was always going to be a standout production this Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts. Billed as a celebration of female strength and agility, it sees a cast of nine women (aerialists Imogen Stone, Katelyn Reed, Ellyce Bisson, and Rosita Hendry, and dancers Brydie Colquhoun, Jemima Smith, Anu Khapung, Nadiyah Akbar, and Aleeya Mcfadyen-Rew) float and fly, contort and convulse, levitate and palpitate to each precise, driving, swirling beat of Eden Mullholland’s stratospheric soundscape, composed in collaboration with Jol Mulholland and live musician Anita Clark, who weaves a throughline that magnetises us with her ethereal voice and virtuosic violin.  

Rowan Pierce’s production design is an electric storm that wholly transforms the landscape, utilising smoke, strobe, and stunning special effects to create cinematic tableaus the likes of which I’ve not seen on stage before. The result is a breathtaking 55-minute optical illusion where dancers appear and reappear like magic, swallowed whole by haze only to reilluminate, suspended from the ceiling; engulfed by the pitch-black void to reanimate, stacked on shoulders, poised upside down in the box seats, coiled in apparatus designed especially for the show by inspired aerial choreographer Jenny Ritchie.  

While there is no narrative, themes emerge for the viewer to interpret. I find myself thinking of control and oppression; ritual and camaraderie; birth, rebirth, and death; matriarchs and lunar cycles; and above all, the fearsome power of women. One scene that sees the cast walk to the front of the stage to circle a glowing, clear disc one by one, each interacting with it differently, doesn’t feel as striking or as intentional as the rest. But perhaps “what does it mean” isn’t the right question. Maybe the right question is, “was that real?” The staggering cast and creatives of BELLE breathe, heave, and electrify as one to convey Johnston’s extraordinary vision: one that I still can’t quite believe I’ve seen with my own two eyes.

UK-based male sextet The King's Singers have represented the gold standard in a cappella singing on the world's greatest stages for over 50 years. They are renowned for their unrivalled technique, versatility, and skill in performance, and for their consummate musicianship, drawing on the group's rich heritage and its pioneering spirit to create a wealth of original works and unique collaborations.

Following an impeccably pronounced reo Māori greeting, the concert programme celebrates compositions ancient and modern by, or inspired by, songbirds avian and human. It kicks off appropriately with a delicious rendition of Songbird by Fleetwood Mac.

Cleanly swooping from The Beatles’ Blackbird to a Canadian folk song called She’s Like the Swallow, they flutter onto a quirky Australian piece called Cuckoo in the Pear Tree, Schubert, Ravel, French and Italian madrigals, and an entertaining French song called Le Chant des Oiseaux in which the composer “crammed in as many silly bird noises as he could”. This last number elicits a sly miaow from an audience member during the applause. They finish the first half with a charming song written for the group in 1972 based on a German folk story about a donkey, dog, cat, and chicken going to a singing competition in Bremen.

The second half kicks off with three stunning numbers from Disney films. The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond is followed by This Little Light of Mine, which I heard just two weeks ago on the same stage sung completely differently. Two Paul Simon songs, a gorgeous piece called Father, Father by Laura Mvula, and a George Gershwin classic round out the second half. They made me even happier by coming back for an encore of And So It Goes by Billy Joel. All of this was delivered under beautifully lit and sparkling chandeliers.

By the end of the concert, I felt like I’d had a quart of Bailey’s poured into my ears and it doesn’t get much better than that on a Wednesday night.

Tusiata Avia is big, fat, brown, and angry about the treatment of Pacific peoples in New Zealand. Big Fat Brown Bitch is the latest poetry collection by Avia, written after ACT party leader David Seymour’s criticism of her award-winning previous poetry collection The Savage Coloniser Book created news. In bold, direct language, it addresses racism and how the colonisation of Aotearoa still affects people today – from the personal, such as name-calling at school, to the national, as when Avia calls out specific government leaders who’ve made decisions she disagrees with.

The first section of the book, Werewolf, is the most political. It’s arresting and doesn’t shy away from swearing or discussing hate speech. It’s not one for all audiences, but Avia has an undeniable way of making you stop and take note of her words. “I am the girl who bites like this,” reads one poem, and the lines do feel like furious dog bites at the world.

The final section, Malu | Protection, is the most abstract and covers traditional tattooing practices. The narrator and her niece search family records for the best symbols to use, and she imagines being deep underwater with taniwha while the painful tattooing process takes place. The poems explore being half-Samoan, growing up separate from your ancestry and not speaking the language, exemplified in The opening lāuga, the ceremony where the Samoan orators speak from one side of the page and Avia’s narrator is aligned to the opposite side.

If I had to critique, a couple of the poems didn’t feel very distinct from each other. However, overall, it’s a cohesive collection which doesn’t falter in sharing the strengths and trials of Avia’s life. FCC Theatre Company will be performing an adaptation of Avia’s The Savage Coloniser Book, directed by Anapela Polata’ivao, this Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts if you’re interested in seeing more of her work. And if you’re not – “Come for me babe, what else have I got to lose?”

Starting with Graeme Dingle and Jill Tremain in 1971 as they attempted to traverse the Kā Tiritiri o te Moana, aka the Southern Alps, Epic Adventures Across Aotearoa takes readers on an adventure of a lifetime.

Each chapter is its only little story, where the new protagonist(s) dare to push themselves to the limit on adventures that will in some cases take your breath away. Despite all the obstacles, they found a way to keep pushing and overcame hurdles that some (myself included) would find insurmountable. For someone like me who is more of an ‘armchair adventurer’, this book inspired me to get out of my comfort zone and start exploring – although not quite to the extent of what is covered here!

Salisbury’s writing is fantastic and a real standout component of the book. I felt that I was there living each adventure alongside the heroes the author encapsulates. Illustrations and maps make them seem even more alive than they are and bring their journeys to life. Non-fiction writing can be boring, but not Salisbury’s. I was engaged on every page.

My favourite part was chapter four, where mountaineer Richard Ackerley set himself the goal of climbing to the top of Aoraki/Mount Cook before turning 20 – something he achieved. I also especially liked the summary at the end of each chapter as I got a little taste of what became of each adventurer afterwards.

There are no downsides that I can see to this book; it’s well written with great additional visual content that leaps off the page and sucks you in.

As previously mentioned, Epic Adventures Across Aotearoa gave me a little inspiration to see more of my country, and I hope it does the same for you. If you see this on a bookshelf and haven’t explored New Zealand but want to, I seriously encourage you to pick it up.