Jubilation presented an eclectic smorgasbord of orchestral music. NZSO music director Emeritus James Judd returned to the conductor’s podium as the evening’s featured artist, and provided friendly and accessible commentary. The concert included two short pieces from young New Zealand composers alongside works by Richard Strauss and Dmitri Shostakovich. As a group these pieces felt incongruous, and I don’t think the programming opened up fruitful conversations between them. That said, the variety and virtuosity on display still made for an enjoyable evening.

The performance opened with Henry Meng’s fleeting Fanfare, which was bitingly concentrated and exuberant. The two-minute work contains plenty of complexity, transitioning rapidly from its domineering brass opening to an expressive oboe melody and back to straining violins. Meng shuns resolution or breathing space in Fanfare to an extreme but exhilarating degree.

This was followed by Strauss’ Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, an orchestral suite adapted from the musical accompaniment to a comedy of the same name, which details the disastrous exploits of a middle-class man who longs to be accepted into the aristocracy. The many soloists couldn’t be faulted, and the light, comedic tone of the work shone through.

After interval we were treated to Sai Natarajan’s We Long for an Adventure. Featuring a playfully jazzy theme interspersed with forceful strings, Natarajan’s composition is a delicious snack that felt more substantial than its four-minute runtime would suggest.

However, the night belonged to Shostakovich’s ninth. Symphony No. 9 in E-flat Major, Op. 70 premiered in 1945 and was received with hostility both in the Soviet Union and by American critics. The work is irreverent to the point of hostility, but still deeply felt. As in the NZSO’s past performances of Shostakovich, the orchestra demonstrated mastery of the heady combination of humour and anguish that drives his compositions. The woodwind section deserves particular praise, with the flutes’ gorgeous molten phrases echoed heartbreakingly by the oboe in the fourth movement.

A nuanced slice of life, short film Anu beautifully captures grief, mourning, and healing in just a 14-minute of runtime. After a successful international film festival circuit run, you can watch it online through the streaming service MUBI.

When Anu (Prabha Ravi) touches down in New Zealand following her flight from India during the pandemic, her hotel room is austere and impersonal. The grey walls of the room and the clouded sky beyond the window sit in sharp contrast to the bright yellow COVID-19 signage, its positively coded imagery eerily unsympathetic to the state of the world. The first thing Anu unpacks is a man’s jacket, which she hangs on the back of one of two chairs placed around a small table. We come to learn she is mourning the death of her husband as she scrolls through his WhatsApp voice recordings of grocery lists and daily musings – glimpses of the life they had built together. With the world going into lockdown, she must confront her grief head-on and perform a bereavement ritual without help by preparing Pind Daan in quarantine by herself.

 Anu is empathetically and tenderly written and directed by Kiwi Indian filmmaker Pulkit Arora. He looks upon loss with compassion as he sensitively paints the human face of the pandemic. His story is deeply affecting and personal yet universal in its depiction of the human experience. Adam Luxton’s cinematography frames every shot with intention and directness, yet each frame is heavy with visual cues. Wellingtonian Ravi brings a raw intensity to her debut cinematic performance in an almost wordless role. As her character teeters on the brink of emotional collapse, she embodies anguish, anger, determination, and hope throughout the emotional and lonely journey.

I could feel my cheeks burning and my eyes welling up as Anu realises that the voice messages from her husband had disappeared. In Anu, the gut-wrenching, chest-collapsing feeling of loss is distilled into the small moments, the ones in which you truly feel the absence. Not with a bang but with a methodical and quiet whisper, Anu encapsulates the empty space surrounding grief.

Jak Darling, in their NZ International Comedy Festival debut, is looking for a muse. Usually this might be an inspiring person, but inspiration can come from many intangible places. Recognising this, Darling searches through uproarious experiences, twisted perspectives, and romantically absurd flights of imagination. Will any of these become the elusive muse?

When Darling walks on stage, I’m gobsmacked by their instantly iconic dress. It has such power that it makes me, someone with no drive to escape from pants and a shirt, feel a twinge of envy. They start to remove the dress, but require help from a cardboard cutout of a pigeon, creating a flirtatiously narrated tryst. This moment unmistakably shows how they combine sensuality with delightfully vulgar silliness.

Darling feels commandingly irreverent – we’re going to be silly. Deal with it. This unapologetic attitude is frequently explored through their experiences of queerness. In one story, they take irritation and wrap it in charm, playfully mocking the neuroticisms of an ‘ally’ who is only supportive in a self-serving manner.

A dizzying performer, their tone-shuffling artistry traverses stand-up, theatre, poetry, and music. Poetry transforms a Wellington bus trip into a picturesque Venetian tale full of romance, intrigue, and an overwhelming number of puns. Darling showcases puppetry with an ‘environmental guilt’-gobbling turtle, skilfully timed against an array of sound effects aided by Sanjay Parbhu. Quaint ukulele strumming is paired with total debauchery.

It’s barely noticed, but when Darling fails to reach a mic stand, they briefly turn it into a heightened drama. Even when caught off guard, they maintain their attitude of turning struggles into confidence, playfulness, and glamour. Their comedy seems to encapsulate their true character, and it creates a cohesiveness that makes the whole show feel that much more compelling.

Ultimately, Darling’s approach to comedy is addictive and highly amusing. It feels wrong to reveal the muse that they discover, but through their bold example, I have discovered a muse in Jak Darling.

Han-Na Chang showed herself to be a passionate, expressive, and energetic conductor. Born in Korea, Chang was an acclaimed cellist at the age of 11, winning a major international competition before later turning to conducting.

Opening the concert was a new work by New Zealander Leonie Holmes, I watched a shadow. Holmes created a dense, multi-layered soundscape, the swirling texture frequently pierced by higher, sharper, or louder interjections. Inspired by a poem that depicts a shadow climbing and gradually extinguishing the light on a hill, the work ends with a fortissimo climax which Chang exploited to the full.

The second work in the concert was Richard Strauss’ Don Quixote, depicting episodes from the 17^th-century novel about the hapless, would-be knight adventurer, and his off-sider Sancho Panza. The solo cello part, played by Andrew Joyce, represented the Don, while Sancho Panza is represented principally by a viola played by Julia Joyce. The work is inventive, energetic, and varied in texture and mood, sometimes dramatic and heroic, sometimes lyrical, and often straight-up hilarious, as when the orchestra becomes a flock of sheep which the deluded hero imagines is an enemy to be attacked. It felt to me that the Don’s musical character got a bit submerged in the riotousness of the orchestral parts. On the other hand, it was great for once to hear a viola in an extended solo part.

Tchaikovsky’s well-loved Symphony No. 5 concluded the performance. A theme, known as the Fate theme, runs through the four movements, with mournful foreboding about fate gradually giving way to a heroic and optimistic acceptance of it. Beautiful melodies abound and there are wonderful opportunities for flute, oboe, bassoon, and horn to shine. Chang’s robust and dramatic interpretation drew the best from the orchestra and engendered wild applause from an appreciative audience.

I have been listening to Amy Winehouse every day for almost a week now. I go to bed with You Know I’m No Good playing in my head like a lullaby. I’m singing Valerie in the shower, strolling through Wellington to F*** Me Pumps, belting out Rehab in the car where no one will hear my voice breaking to keep up with hers.

After watching Back to Black I tried to sit down and write this review, but something wasn’t sitting right, so in the name of journalistic integrity I watched the 2015 documentary Amy. Now I understand that Back to Black is not about the GRAMMY®-winning jazz singer, it’s about an incomplete idea of her. It’s a shadow without even a glimmer of her complex, sincere, fiery soul.

Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson with screenplay by Matt Greenhalgh, the only reason I give this biopic two stars is for the exceptional effort of actress Marisa Abela as our chanteuse. She captures Winehouse’s mannerisms and sings her words with commendable intensity.

I’ve come to learn that Back to Black was made alongside the Winehouse estate – though Taylor-Johnson vehemently denies any input from the family. However, when juxtaposing the biopic with Asif Kapadia’s award-winning Amy, which is narrated in majority by the singer herself, it becomes clear that this 2024 dramatisation is just that – fictionalised. It’s skewed, taking out any agency or wholeness and reducing Winehouse’s short albeit bright life entirely to her relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil (played admirably by Jack O’Connell).

I’d like to add here that Winehouse’s father Mitch criticised and rebuked the validity of Amy, which depicts him in an all-too glaring light, something Back to Black is careful to avoid, going so far as to justify his inertia as naïveté. The biopic rescinds the narrative that the documentary has restored to Winehouse. It absolves any blame from her family, management, fans, and the media, depicting her as girlish and weak. It revokes her agency, her tortured genius, and the fierce spirit that made her special. It reduces her to an inevitable casualty.

Don’t watch Back to Black to get a glimpse of Amy. Listen to her music and you will see her.

Brynley Stent is a Billy T Award-winning comedian who you may recognise from Taskmaster NZ. Pus Goose is a… wait, what is a “pus goose”? It sounds like some sort of scary monster from a bizarre horror movie. Well, as it turns out, Pus Goose is a show all about fear and just how ridiculous it can be.

Perhaps this is technically a stand-up show, but right from the start it feels nothing like one. Unlike most stand-up comedy, Pus Goose has a subtle theatrical atmosphere, evoking the nostalgia, light horror, and wonder you might associate with a Stranger Things episode. Stent’s NZ International Comedy Festival show is introduced and contextualised through the world of a spooky childhood board game. Using the game, she bouncily guides us through the dark glowing realms of her silliest fears – and with each one, we jump through a portal into an absurd tale from her life.

Pus Goose seems to be what happens when a rambunctious theatre kid insists on doing stand-up comedy. As a result of this collision, Stent breaks free from many of the limitations associated with the format. While she tells stories, impressions and sketches become highlights rather than asides, and it’s all richly decorated with infographics, videos, voiceovers, sound effects, and lighting.

The atmosphere may suggest a more serious show – but to be clear, the content ranges from quizzing the audience on the sex appeal of Cadbury Yowies, to a riveting impression of an office printer. Stent is upbeat, joyfully chaotic, and wildly expressive. She’s like that one friend who just has to act out stories for you – except this time, the friend is hilarious and armed with a special effects department.

Overall, Pus Goose successfully combines effects and immersion with the stand-up experience of laughing among your mates. Stent goes beyond expressing herself with the content of her work to express herself with the medium too. Unfortunately, now my next conversation is going to feel woefully incomplete without slideshows and sound effects.

Alayne Dick never forgets an insult. In fact, she wrote a whole show about it, coming at you as part of the NZ International Comedy Festival. She describes herself at the start as “a lesbian who makes jokes on the internet, which makes men on the internet mad”. It’s easy to see how this adorably nerdy librarian in a purple T-shirt, shorts, high-top sneakers, and rainbow socks, with big glasses, lusciously long hair, and an obviously genital surname might upset fragile male (and probably some female) egos. She’s smart, sassy, and a whole bunch funnier than every incel on the web.

I feel seen when she starts talking about reviewers needing to use her surname in their reviews and its hilarious results: “Dick has us hungry for more” or, less kindly but perhaps more appropriately, “Dick always disappoints”.

The lack of pockets in jeggings, Vin Diesel’s ludicrously low voice, being an only child, the creepiness of pre-schoolers, Beaver Town Blenheim, the Boomer obsession with small-town murder TV, and many other subjects come under Dick’s frenetic but laser-like focus over the course of this comedy hour.

Occasional bursts of modern jazz dance accompany the high-energy delivery, but it’s not all frivolous. Like all good self-effacing stand-up, there are moments of intimacy and pathos as Dick relates her teenage dive into gay fan fiction due to the lack of good queer media – apart from Glee, obviously – and her relationship with her stoic, uncommunicative dad.

I particularly relate to her description of going to an uptight all-girls school that was simultaneously conservative and gay, then becoming a convincing vegetarian to qualify for the limited number of much tastier non-meat meals in her university hall canteen. And I’m totally going to take up her suggestion of making sure I have uninvited chaotic exes to yell “I object!” at my next wedding.

Dick doesn’t disappoint, it turns out.

I am one of Guy Montgomery’s 50 million fans and I’m not wrong. A multi-award-winning, instantly recognisable face on the New Zealand comedy circuit, you may remember Guy from the “proudly stupid” clip show Fail Army or the smash-hit podcast The Worst Idea of All Time in which he and Tim Batt dissected the same bad movie over and over again. Maybe you’ve seen him on Taskmaster NZ, Celebrity Treasure Island, or Have You Been Paying Attention?. However you’ve come to know him, you’ve hopefully come to love his distinct brand of comedy like I have.

It’s one that’s very difficult to describe, but that’s my job so here goes. Surrealism meets precision, absurd observations make sense as Montgomery rolls onto the stage, stoked and surprised we’re clapping, to spin bizarre, brilliant yarns that feel erratic and tangential until you realise how intricate, how interconnected they are. He applies razor-sharp wit to the obscurest of obscurities, leaning into the illusion of being barely “smarter than a fish” when secretly, sneakily, his content is cleverer than a 12-year-old pretending to be an 11-year-old at the airport so they can receive special treatment as an unaccompanied minor. Inside joke.

I last saw Montgomery live at the 2023 NZ International Comedy Festival at Te Auaha, an excellent but much smaller venue. In Over 50,000,000 Guy Fans Can’t Be Wrong, he’s sold out The Opera House and hypothesises that the 1400-strong crowd may well be there to see him. He informs us that we’re in for “mostly sentences” and proceeds to string loads of hilarious ones together about lesbians, New Year’s resolutions, urinals, greyhounds, and more. Peppered with syllabic stress in all the wrong places, disarming and natural crowd chat, effortlessly awkward charm, and the occasional startling bellow, Montgomery’s delivery makes every sentence all the more genius. I laugh and laugh, even during the ones about sportsball despite having zero investment in the subject.

A comedian that continues to grow from strength to strength, Guy Montgomery will likely soon have 50 million-bajillion fans. Join them and you, too, can’t be wrong.

This was a brilliantly designed and executed concert. The theme for The Grand Gesture was to illustrate how composers often go to the music of fellow composers, past and present, for inspiration. In this concert, Stravinsky’s Suite from Pulcinella borrowed from works composed by 18^th century Pergolesi, Handel modelled his Concerti Grossi on forms used by his contemporary Corelli, while 20^th century Lukas Foss’ Baroque Variations transformed baroque works by Handel, Scarlatti, and Bach.

This borrowing was illustrated by unexpected solo performances of source works at the start of each half of the programme. The soloists, violinist Amalia Hall and harpsichord player Jonathan Berkahn, were spotlit in the darkened hall as they played. Magic!

Pulcinella is an appealing work, full of good rhythms, good tunes, and good humour. Maybe the orchestra was a bit tentative at the start but it was a spirited performance on the whole. There were lots of opportunities for individual instruments to shine, especially in the wind and brass sections.

The soloists for Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins were Amalia Hall and Monique Lapins. It’s an immensely lovely work with the two violins echoing and chasing each other. I also enjoyed the fine basso continuo work of the cellos and double basses. Handel’s grand gesture, Concerto Grosso Op. 6 No. 12, also featured Hall and Lapins with principal cellist Inbal Megiddo. Again, this was elegantly played with clarity and balance by soloists and orchestra.

Then came Foss’ work! His sources were transformed, so that one heard sometimes just a ghost of the original, with strings bowing some notes silently or playing half phrases completed by other instruments. The effect was like splintered sound in an echo chamber. Foss also marshalled an array of unusual percussion in the last movement. It was wild. Taddei compared it to an old-fashioned acid trip!