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.

The Mystery Guest follows head maid Molly Gray as she tries to keep the edges of sheets crisp and the memory of her nan alive, all while being a murder suspect. 

With a tainted past, the five-star Regency Grand Hotel desperately wants to improve their reputation. The staff are just able to reopen the renovated tearoom in time to host a special event for a bestselling mystery author. On the precipice of his exclusive announcement, the author dies suddenly and all hands point to the maid. After a previous false accusation, the police reluctantly work with Molly to solve the case due to her attention to detail.  

The Mystery Guest follows Molly both as an adult and as her 10-year-old self. The flashbacks provide insight into who Molly is today, and why her job as head maid means so much to her. She is an endearing protagonist who views the world as black and white, struggling to read social cues and always working towards making things right.

As a child, she calls on her imagination and uses her fairytale-like wonder to create a protective shield around her to get through tough experiences. She doesn’t understand that correcting the grammar of other kids won’t gain her any friends, nor why the teachers want to hold her back a grade. But with a close connection to her nan, her imagination, and her passion for cleaning, it doesn’t get her down and she carries on. 

As an adult, she is by the book and for the book, living and quoting the Maid’s Manual she’s working on as she works to solve the crime – whilst also trying to solve the mysteries of those around her and maintain the proper etiquette of a head maid.

The Mystery Guest exists in the realm of cosy crime and is an easy read as the past unfolds the mysteries of the present. Solving the crime is all part of the fun. It’s a great summer read.

“Writing is my first love… it’s my doctor, it’s my therapist… but it also gives a voice to a lot of folks who don’t know how to express it.” – Dolly Parton. 

Dolly Parton has always been a prolific writer. In her five-decade career, she has penned over 3000 songs, with the first written at age five. She easily steps into the shoes of other people and writes with her heart from a place of truth. However, this skill has led to the banning of some of her songs due to conservative views at radio stations. 

Known for a high head of blonde hair, acrylics, and an hourglass figure, Dolly’s look has remained the same as her character. Author Tracey E. W. Laird ensures Dolly’s personality shines through Dolly Parton: 100 Remarkable Moments in an Extraordinary Life, making it clear that she has been a hard-working, kind, charismatic, smart businesswoman every step of the way.

Coming from nothing, Dolly grew up as the fourth child of 12 in the Smoky Mountains, a place she is always giving back to. She focuses on her faith and love for all without alienating or passing judgement. Over the years, she has donated generously and founded charities, including Imagination Library, which gives a child one free book a month from birth to kindergarten. 

Dolly will always be full of surprises, whether it’s making a rock album in her seventies, writing a thriller with James Patterson, or sealing an unheard song in a time capsule that can’t be opened until 2045. It is hard to sum up Dolly in snapshots of her career, but Laird does well. The author excels when she writes about the stories behind Dolly’s songs and the feelings they evoke, mixed with what she was wearing when performing, transporting you into the moment with her. This novel is a great introduction to Dolly and serves as an impressive collection of her accomplishments throughout her legendary career. 

A few pages into The World I Found, I was ambivalent about whether I was going to enjoy it, but as it happens, I did.

In what is author Latika Vasil’s first foray into the young adult genre, The World I Found is narrated by 15-year-old Quinn. A seemingly innocuous sea-bound trip in the Spirit of Discovery to Campbell Island for a year, with her scientist mother, screams boredom – one personified by the distinct lack of the sweet trappings of youth: shops, junk food, fellow teens, the internet, and most importantly, her best friend Frankie.

The relative safety of the island soon dissipates when Quinn and Jeroen, the son of her mother’s peer Dr Waslander, are swept overboard as the team, hitching a ride on Greenpeace’s Artic Star, makes its way back to the homeland after communications are lost. Afar, something disturbing is afoot. Both Quinn and Jereon wash up, bruised, sea-beaten, and separated from the others on a remote beach on the mainland they came from, but no longer recognise.

They awake to the haloed face of an equally alone 12-year-old boy, Cal, peering down at them. They are soon confronted with the new normal brought about by the ravages of a deadly virus, one quickly spread with little recovery (sounds all too familiar) that has swept the mainland. Quinn, possessed with a fighting spirit yet calm demeanour, quickly realises she has more grit and tenacity than belies her youth to respond. The trio soon meet Jack and Robyn, kindly old folk living off the land, hunkered down and hoping for normality to return. But there’s something nefarious, cult-like, waiting round the bend...

The World I Found has a simple but steady premise. Of course, now that we are no strangers to pandemics and what they can bring, the novel makes you think about what you might do or become in the same scenario – only this time with a more apocalyptic vibe.

The Air Between Us is a captivating aerial dance show performed in mid-air in the new creative space at the back of Te Whaea. Choreographer and dancer Chloe Loftus and multi-award-winning artist and performer Rodney Bell (Ngāti Maniopoto), who performs in his stylish wheelchair, weave an intricate, sensuous, and beautiful story of the literal push and pull of a complex emotional relationship. They seek to “explore our innate capacity to exist in symbiotic harmony, with each other and with our environment”.

They arrive separately, Bell travelling slowly along the aisle between the cushion-dwelling youngsters with their adults and the mostly wheelchair-occupying front row, gently touching them as he passes. Loftus walks in from the audience rostra, and they slowly circle the floor-lit stage before meeting in the middle beneath a double aerial harness. At first, Loftus connects to the harness, flying horizontally around Bell as he gently catches her feet. Then she’s climbing upwards on the harness ropes while he circles below her.

Switching the harness to support them both, they whirl and twist together through the air, embracing, balancing each other, always at one whether together or apart. Finally, Loftus walks calmly away and Bell spins upside down, suspended peacefully and alone until lowering back to terra firma.

It’s mesmerising to watch each exactly paced and balletic movement. Accompanied by appropriately involving music, and their clearly visible rigger Tym Miller-White and his counterweight, their performance is a deeply satisfying work of harmony, synchronicity, and inclusion. The performers are equal in ability and connection in this ungrounded space.

The pleasing sense of inclusivity extends beyond the performers to the attentive staff, seating area that caters to those who can’t or don’t want to sit on the unforgiving plastic seats, and the cost-free entry. It’s wonderful to see the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts embracing this ethos so wholeheartedly.

At just 20 minutes long, The Air Between Us is a bijou but utterly fulfilling piece that says so much more than words can convey.

Everybody fails, sometimes spectacularly. Few write a fearless book about it, but this is exactly what feminist writer Chris Kraus did after her experimental feature film epically flopped at a Berlin film market in 1998. Based on her book Aliens & Anorexia, this bold and innovative stage show seeks to answer the question: how did it all go so wrong?

Co-playwright Karin McCracken takes the lead role of Kraus and is supported by an ensemble cast of four (Nī Dekkers-Reihana, Simon Leary, Rongopai Tickell, and Sam Snedden) who expertly fill all the other roles in her strange life. McCracken is natural and engaging as someone who eventually realises that having no visual imagination is a bad foundation for becoming a filmmaker.

As much cinema as theatre, this stage show uses four cameras positioned beside, above, and on the stage to live-project the actors onto a large screen behind the acting area. Objects (including a gross-looking bowl of cold Campbell’s minestrone soup) also appear, set up on a lightbox at the edge of the stage. The technical work to mix this varying vision with recorded footage, sometimes matching it frame for frame, is astounding. Video designer Owen Iosefa McCarthy, video programmer Rachel Neser (Artificial Imagination), and show operator Natasha Thyne deserve special recognition. Also working seamlessly with the technology is a subtly effective lighting design (Rob Larsen) that lets the actors be seen but never gets in the way of the projections and atmospheric soundscape (Emi 恵美 Pogoni).

Another clever touch in the staging (performance designer Meg Rollandi) is a cut-out section of the screen that has a gauzy covering behind which the actors appear as characters, such as the British film producer Kraus has a long-distance sadomasochistic phone-sex relationship with, who Kraus never meets.

The many awesome technical ideas make the show run a little long at two-and-a-half hours, but this is my only critique of an otherwise fascinating and creatively delivered production.

The attacks on worshippers at the Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre on the 15^th of March 2019 left a permanent mark on New Zealand. Over the last two years, Muslim communities around Aotearoa have provided guidance and support for this anniversary concert.

Umoja Anthem of Unity, by Valerie Coleman, set the theme – promoting peace and unity through music, deliberately intertwining Western and Eastern musical traditions. Singer Abdelilah Rharrabti, vocalist and daf (drum) musician Esmail Fathi, and saz (Turkish long-necked lute) player Liam Oliver from Ōtautahi Christchurch’s Simurgh Music School were accompanied by the orchestra, somewhat in the form of a concerto. The Eastern tonal structure was strong and the men’s voices were powerfully reminiscent of the grief and trauma suffered in 2019 and since.

Moroccan artist Oum, known for her modern take on traditional sounds, gave a strong vocal performance in Daba, that strength made greater in the way her solo voice faded at the finish.

Reza Vali’s Funèbre for solo violin and strings was a standout, emotional, gut-wrenching experience. NZSO concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s versatility and musicality brought a voice from his violin that echoed the voices heard earlier.

In Mantilatos, Kyriakos Tapakis showed us how a virtuoso plays his oud, how impressive it sounds, and how hard his fingers worked as the last bars raced along at breakneck pace.

Arvo Pärt’s Silouan’s Song was beautifully and confidently played and lifted to another level by conductor Fawzi Haimor’s skilful use of silence in the pauses.

The final piece, Ahlan wa Sahlan, commissioned from John Psathas and composed in collaboration with Oum and Tapakis, was about belonging and being safe with the people you know. The five movements traversed cultures and emotions, Oum’s vocals and Tapakis’ oud above the orchestra, reminding us of language and music still not always familiar to Western ears, and that we must continue to learn from the 15^th of March.

The Man Whose Mother Was a Pirate: The Musical sets sail off the pages of Margaret Mahy’s treasured children’s picture book of the same name. The story follows Sam (Taipuhi King) as he finally breaks free from his job as an accountant to join his pirate mother (Hilary Norris) on the high seas.

Drawing from the Mahy classic, master composer and lyricist Nino Raphael has created catchy tunes with words that roll off the tongues of the performers. The sea shanties and patter songs are superb, with a highlight being Sam’s ditty about auditing his mother’s books. I would love there to be a wider variety of songs, as I feel this would enhance the musical even more.

Raphael is fantastic on concertina, guitar, and piano. Who needs a philharmonic orchestra when you have a one-man band providing sensational accompaniment and support? He is fantastic at leading both the cast and the audience. We essentially become the ensemble, filling the quaint venue of The Welsh Dragon Bar with lively, rowdy joy. I hope that in future renditions of this show, audience interaction remains a focal point.

All the performers have stunning vocals and a strong grasp of the music despite having a short rehearsal period. They embody their roles – inspired by the original story – with distinct, hilarious characterisations. I understand the musical is intended to be longer and am very curious to see how the characters would grow and develop when given more time on stage, especially Mr Fat (Adam Herbert).

Whilst this is their (sold out!) development season, I am extremely impressed. I can see this upbeat, energetic show becoming incredibly popular. I am very privileged to have caught the first-ever performance, as well as The Welsh Dragon Bar’s Fringe Festival debut. I hope that The Man Whose Mother was a Pirate: The Musical continues to catch the wind in its sails and travels far.

The writer’s note in the programme sets up the premise for JIMMY, a New Zealand Fringe Festival show, as “our friend Cole Hampton. It’s the story of Jimmy, a character Cole was playing in a script I wrote for him and Ari Leason. We were rehearsing it at the time of his death. We could never do that play. So we wrote JIMMY.” It’s a poignant and tender beginning for a heartfelt love-letter-cum-eulogy to a lost companion.

Five souls are alone in their own worlds: Jack (Jared Lee) is burrowing down an internet rabbit hole on the nature of the universe; Lou (Ari Leason) is creatively stuck by mourning; Orla (Olivia Marshall) is rehearsing for opening night of a Greek tragedy; Puāwai (Parekawa Finlay) is recalling Māori legends in the constellations; and James (Jono Weston) is remembering summer with his childhood friend. These disparate threads weave together over the course of an hour as these friends and relations of Jimmy’s come together to farewell him. It’s a simply effective and highly relatable narrative structure that is reflected daily in funeral rites the world over as people from each branch of an individual’s life join in remembrance. We learn about Jimmy – his daring, humorous, creative nature – through the recollections of these five.

The vignettes of memory, loss, and grief are interspersed with songs, the real strength of this production. Each cast member has written and performs at least one song and they come together to perform two by Cole Hampton himself, the entertaining Weirdo and the uplifting Good, which they deliver as an impromptu wake for Jimmy. The cast are endearing and clearly demonstrate the varying trauma of grief without going overboard. Leason is particularly strong with her beautiful voice and guitar-playing.

The underscoring theme of space and time reflects the ultimate message of JIMMY: even if you die, you still exist through other people. And that’s something we all should wish for upon a star.

There is no grammatical reason for the word ‘spice’ to be capitalised in Dune: Part Two. The hinge upon which this story turns, spice is the psychedelic drug harvested from the Sahara-esque planet of Arrakis. As the evil Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) says in the opening line of the film, “He who controls the Spice, controls the universe.” This is all well and fine, but why did they have to go and capitalise spice? In Frank Herbert’s books, spice is rightfully helmed by a small ‘s’. In the real world, we do not capitalise oregano or basil, nor cocaine or marijuana. It’s not a proper noun either. It’s a sparkly, hallucinogenic dust that has turned the Fremen’s home planet into a desolate, battle-torn wasteland; a dust that has destroyed House Atreides and made our protagonist Paul (Timothée Chalamet) both a fugitive and a prophet; a dust that makes the whole world turn.

This grammatical oversight, however, is my biggest criticism. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Part Two is a spectacular space saga worth the two hour and 45-minute runtime. I highly recommend watching it on a big screen to become fully immersed in Greig Fraser’s arresting cinematography and soak in the magnitude of Patrice Vermette’s soviet dystopian design. The seats shake to Hans Zimmer’s reverberating soundtrack, a rumbling storm on the horizon threatening to break – a mirror to the unfolding story.  

At the centre of Dune: Part Two are the Fremen, the Indigenous people of Arrakis who are involved in a conflict much larger than they realise. The two Fremen sects are expertly personified by Stilgar (Javier Bardem), who believes Paul is Lisan al Gaib or the messiah, and Chani (Zendaya), Paul’s love interest, who thinks the idea of a foreign saviour was planted by those trying to subjugate them in the first place. Paul’s destiny weighs heavy on his shoulders as he chooses between which fate he must follow. Like it or not, he is at the centre of a universe waiting to explode.

There will definitely be a third instalment, so buckle up – it’s a wild and bumpy ride on the back of a behemoth sandworm.

Following their critically acclaimed production Wild Dogs Under My Skirt at the 2018 Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts, the FCC creative team is back this festival, bringing to ferocious life Tusiata Avia’s Ockham Poetry Award-winning The Savage Coloniser Book.

Far from being a simple poetry reading, this is a blisteringly provocative theatrical presentation by six Pasifika actors who speak, sing, and move their way through Avia’s confronting texts. She is totally unafraid to cast an unforgiving and provocative eye over race and racism, coloniser and colonised. The poems cross-examine the cringe-making things white people say, Gauguin’s sexualised utopian vision of Tahiti, white criticism of intergenerational trauma as an ‘excuse’ for bad behaviour, the stereotyping of South Aucklanders, a health sector that uses BMI as a weapon against Brown people, and much more. Woe betide you if you’re a National or ACT voter; Christopher Luxon and Judith Collins don’t come off well at all. That’s not to say the show isn’t funny. It’s achingly so and at many times causes a ripple of laughter and applause through the audience, as well as the odd whoop of righteous agreement.

The exceptional cast of Stacey Leilua, Joanna Mika-Toloa, Mario Faumui, Petmal Petelo, Ilaisaane Green, and Katalaina Polata’ivao-Saute totally own the stage. They are a strong, slick, and superbly coordinated team (choreography by Tupua Tigafua and Mario Faumui) with just six chairs, six machetes, and a mirror as props. They are aided by a superb set and a lighting design (production designers Bradley Gledhill and Rachel Marlow) that cleverly employs projections onto a sheer screen in front of the actors and smoke and lights behind them to emphasise the poetry, along with haunting music composed by David Long.

The Savage Coloniser Show is savage both in its content and its execution, while also being a creation of theatrical artistry. Leaving much to think about and examine in your own behaviour, it is a bold and necessary understanding of the history of Aotearoa.

A capacity crowd including many decades-long fans paid Homme-age to Josh and the band at an extremely hot TSB Arena. Queens of the Stone Age’s world tour supports their acclaimed eighth studio album In Times New Roman, but with an extensive catalogue spanning nearly 30 years, only five new songs out of a total of 19 were played. 

The soothing background music was in stark contrast to the band’s concert opener Regular John, featuring the blistering guitars of Josh Homme, longtime bandmate Troy Van Leeuwen, and keyboardist/guitarist Dean Fertita. The rocking No One Knows followed and had the crowd pumped and trying to sing the roof off! 

The highly interactive Homme had his adoring fans in the palm of his hand with a good-humoured call-and-response of “F… You” – offending no-one in this audience. Emotion Sickness, featuring Michael Shuman’s slick bass and gorgeous falsetto harmonies with Van Leeuwen, had the crowd clapping in time to the acapella chorus. 

Despite the occasional cigarette on stage, Homme’s vocals were impressive in range and quality! Time & Place had the band joyously jumping and dancing around the stage. Homme was mesmerising, at times just focusing on his vocal performance with his arms waving in the air, at others staggering around the stage playing searing guitar solos. A frontman at the top of his game, he gave special praise to monster drummer Jon Theodore, whom he said was “puking his guts out with food poisoning yesterday!” 

Make It Wit Chu, with the crowd singing the chorus, and Homme’s effortless falsetto segueing into The Rolling Stones’ Miss You, was a highlight – but this was a concert of too many highs, and songs, to mention.

Little Sister finished the set, but the raucous crowd wasn’t finished yet. Encores Go With The Flow and the haunting Song For The Dead, featuring a thunderous drum solo, closed the show.

The triangle-shaped lighting rig encompassing the band on stage was visually stunning, and the sound balance also impressive. The End Is Nero Tour? Simply superb.

Imagine the kind of tingly, eerie warmth that would course through your veins if you were listening to a Brothers Grimm fairytale by a roaring fire with a glass of whisky in hand. Now imagine the person telling you that story is building a whole world around you, enhancing every beat with shadowplay and spooky soundscapes, projections and puppetry.

That’s the closest I can come to describing a Trick of the Light Theatre show. Few words are capable of capturing the magic this innovative theatre company brings to the stage. Every time.

The latest entry in the canon, The Suitcase Show follows a traveller (Ralph McCubbin Howell) who’s been flagged by security (Hannah Smith) for possessing a number of suspicious items at the airport. In some dingy backroom, the traveller unveils the contents of each suitcase one by one, sharing the stories contained within to an automaton officer who just wants to know if those matches are flammable, actually.

While seemingly unconnected at first, the stories are woven together by a thematic thread that I won’t uncoil here. Each one is told with trademark Trick of the Light flair and effects that are special in all senses of the word. A moving trainset appears out of thin air; a rickety overhead projector unfolds to the beat of a retro space theme (sound design and composition by Tane Upjohn Beatson); a miniature town materialises, lit from within as if by magic; a love story for the ages plays out with nought but four LED lights and two hands (McCubbin Howell in a show highlight). It all climaxes in a hilarious scene featuring videographic wizardry (Dean Hewison) and two end-of-line officers (Anya-Tate Manning, Richard Falkner) tasked with screening the contents of the traveller’s last case. Prohibited items doesn’t begin to cut it.

Trick of the Light Theatre are self-professed notorious tinkerers. As someone who had the privilege of seeing The Suitcase Show twice, the only critiques I would have made had already been addressed by the second show. The only feedback I’ve got left now? Amazing.   

Where you see one woman, you see a thousand, Witi’s Wāhine proclaims with the force of a raging storm, a standing army, an entire tangata past, present, and future echoing their voice. Woven together with the pages of Witi Ihimaera’s stories and golden threads of waiata, this Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts production is a tapestry of wāhine, whenua, and Māori wisdom.

Sitting downstage left, the chair with the crocheted blanket is the lone set piece for now, but it is not alone. Before actors even arrive, before guests take their seats, before the curtain rises, the chair sits occupied by memories of the past and impressions of the future, waiting in anticipation for the present to unfold. Once the performers join, there is silence. Roimata Fox, Awhina-Rose Henare Ashby, Kristyl Neho, and Olivia Violet Robinson-Falconer, with soft smiles on their lips, slowly pan the room, returning the gaze of each and every eye peering up at them. For a few minutes, we are nowhere but in the present.

For the next 120 minutes, we find ourselves somewhere in the in-between. Time and space crack and bend, ebb and flow as the cast, characters, and stories pass through the doors of the set walls (Penny Fit), portals to other realms less tangible than ours. The performers bring the set to life as they dance and fight, shuffle and take flight with unparalleled skill highlighted by brilliantly executed technical effects. The cast of eight are one but they are distinct, each playing a myriad of richly developed characters utterly singular yet somehow joined through their struggles, joys, and whakapapa.

Across the multi-coloured fabric of generations, storms rage, sunlight shines bright, blood drenches through William Smith’s evocative lighting design and Tyna Keelan’s immersive soundscape. Gossamer threads of pain and sorrow, wisdom and instinct stretch across history, twisting our heartstrings into a knot. But when the threads of time unwind, when the worlds of fiction and reality, legend and history uncoil, what remain are flax ribbons of laughter, joy, and love.

Wellington was gifted a rare appearance in our part of the world of the Soweto Gospel Choir as part of the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts. Formed to celebrate the unique and inspirational power of African gospel music, the choir draws on the best talent from the many churches in and around Soweto, Johannesburg. They are dedicated to sharing the joy of faith through music with people across the world and have received critical acclaim and audience adoration for their powerful renditions of African American spirituals, gospel, and folk music.

Hope is an all-new concert by the three-time GRAMMY®-winning choir celebrating songs and anthems from the Freedom movement of Nelson Mandela’s South Africa and the Civil Rights Movement of Martin Luther King’s 1950s America.

It opens with a rousing programme of South African freedom songs. As effervescent choirmaster Shimmy Jiyane says at the start, we may not understand the words being sung in 12 Indigenous languages, but we certainly understand the feeling. The 15-strong choir pours their bodies and souls into every song with energetic, high-kicking dance moves, expressive faces and voices, and pinpoint harmonies. They’re gamely supported by keys (Diniloxolo Ndlakuse) and percussion (Sipho Ngcamu), including an impressive set of drums.

The first half ends with a vibrant part-English, part-African song dedicated to Nelson Mandela and the final harmony on a drawn-out “Madiba” sends shivers down my spine. It’s a stunning segue into the second half, sung mostly in English, with beautiful renditions of the protest music of the Civil Rights Movement, including works by James Brown, Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder, and Aretha Franklin. However, it’s their creative reimagining of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush’s duet Don’t Give Up that is the highlight for me with its African chants and rhythms overlaying the pop.

A massively deserved standing ovation accompanied the sublime final singalong of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, complete with waving phone torches. I left the venue ecstatic and just a bit teary from sheer joy of it all.

Part of this year’s New Zealand Fringe Festival, this play imagines a younger version of Queen Elizabeth II (Aimée Sullivan) walking into a quiet Wellington bookshop, a year after the real monarch’s death. Conversing with the bookstore clerk (Tara Canton), she slowly pieces together what might have brought her here, grappling with questions about her legacy – both as an individual and as the physical embodiment of the Crown.

Canton and Sullivan perform the two parts in the play expertly. To begin with, the environment and circumstances are unclear, but as The Keeper, Canton is effortlessly relaxed. She enters, complacently eating an apple, and writes in a journal throughout the show. Her dialogue is always natural and free. Sullivan, to contrast, uncannily captures the regal voice and mannerisms of the Queen, prim and controlled even in this strange environment. The costumes (decided by the actors themselves) also work well to differentiate the characters’ personalities, with The Keeper wearing a baggy shirt and pants with Crocs, while the young Queen is in a floral dress and pearls.

The audience is arranged in a circle, a desk at one side of the space and a comfy armchair at the other, with piles of books filling the stage in between (set design by producer, writer, and director James Ladanyi). Other books are hung by string from the ceiling, evoking a sense of wonder that supports the surreal story. Both performers use the space well, always showing us both sides of the story and projecting their voices across the stage as their discussion becomes more heated. This makes the back-and-forth almost like a tennis match.

At first, I question the need for a 10-minute interval in a 60-minute show, but it makes sense as the Queen is left on the stage by herself, reading and reflecting, giving more pace and impetus for conflict in the second act.

The Eleventh Trip of Lilibet W. is an ultimately hopeful play. It is a vivid examination of a woman we all knew about, bringing a modern, analytical perspective and inviting us to consider our own stories and legacies.

The opportunity to see a performance from the creative team at A Slightly Isolated Dog is always something to look forward to and they’ve outdone themselves with Our Own Little Mess. Champions of innovation and audience collaboration, they’ve taken their mission to another level with this immersive exploration of the inner voices that drive us.

Five ordinary Kiwis are on personal journeys. An academic (Maaka Pohatu) isolates himself after being rejected for a promotion; a young woman (Louise Jiang) goes on a desperate trip to Europe, lost in grief for her mum’s death; a ventriloquist (Jack Buchanan) has an existential crisis in the desert; a stressed mum (Laurel Devenie) tells stories to her young daughter and misses her husband who’s overseas; and a gay man (Andrew Paterson) imagines his life as a series of art installations while he navigates the dating scene in New York.

As the audience, we hear through headphones the thoughts and anxieties that propel these people on their sometimes-surreal journeys to their own resolutions. This device enables us to hear the voices, both internal and external, that inform their view of the world and how they respond to it. Far from being merely a creative whim, this approach is underpinned by research evidence and the credits boast cognitive neuroscientists (Drs David Carmel and Gina Grimshaw). Audience members are invited to complete an online survey after the show, the responses to which will be part of a full academic study on inner speech.

The uber theatre production design (Meg Rollandi) features clever set pieces that are utilised over and over in new ways, while the lighting design (Leo Gene Peters) sees largely handheld lighting from lamps and torches accentuated by a few stage lights. The two work together to support the narratives. Voices are supplemented by effective and well-balanced music and sound effects (Sam Clavis).

Our Own Little Mess is a spellbinding examination of our inner worlds for this Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts.

Jungle Book reimagined is based on Rudyard Kipling’s beloved The Jungle Book but with a dystopian twist. Ravaged by climate change, Mowgli is separated from her family and arrives alone in a deserted city where animals run the streets. In this strange world, Mowgli discovers unlikely allies and learns the importance of listening to nature.

The dancers (Maya Balam Meyong, Tom Davis-Dunn, Hector Ferrer, Harry Theadora Foster, Filippo Franzese, Bianca Mikahil, Max Revell, Matthew Sandiford, Elpida Skourou, Holly Vallis, Jan Mikaela Villanueva, and Lani Yamanaka) are flexible and full of energy, each embodying a different animal through movement that emphasises and adds layers of meaning to the dialogue spoken. All members of the ensemble stand out in their own right yet work together to become one collective master of storytelling.

From a scenography perspective, the video design (directed by Nick Hillel of YeastCulture) is astonishing and I love the use of two gauzes to screen the vivid animations (rotoscope artists and animators Naaman Azhari, Natasza Cetner, and Edson R Bazzarin, director of animation Adam Smith of YeastCulture). This adds more depth to them as it immerses the performers between two panels of moving picture, creating a satisfying blur between real life and make-believe.

The sound design (Gareth Fry) creates a wonderful soundscape that truly transports us into director and choreographer Akram Khan’s dystopian future. The compositions (Jocelyn Pook) highlight key emotional beats in what is a sensational soundtrack to this captivating performance. The script (Tariq Jordan) is poetic and succinct. This multimedia show has it all.

Every element works together so cohesively to create a mesmerising, thought-provoking piece about our need to work with nature; to belong and to bond with others. We must be one with nature. This show is a warning of a world that could be if we are not.

I sincerely hope that Akram Khan Company brings more state-of-the-art theatre to New Zealand. This is one of the best productions I have seen. Make your journey through the urban jungle and watch Jungle Book reimagined!