Judging by the tone of the language and topics of this book, I pictured the author in his 60s, but the fly leaf photo is of a much younger man. John Summers’ novel is an eclectic mix of family history and stories from his past. The chapter about the birth of his son is focused on the history and impressive sales figures of Arcoroc glass cups (used in hospitals). Go figure!

Summers writes in very simple language and without a lot of expressive flourishes to draw you in. I enjoyed the Elvis chapter as it was an event I could immediately picture. When talking about a group of Elvis impersonators in an Upper Hutt club, Summers made me laugh with his plural of Elvis (Elvi). It sounded like a fun night with all Elvi born equal on the stage (despite age, ethnicity, or appearance). One impersonator said, “The more you drink the more I look like Elvis.” Priceless. The best line of the book for me was: “I left the building before Elvis. The better ending.”

Not so enjoyable for me was the chapter At the Dump. It’s admirable that Summers wants to do his bit for the planet, but I think saying he’s given up buying plastic food wrap is a bit prosaic for a novel and is better suited to a blog. There’s a chapter about freezing works, and while that is a very New Zealand image, I found it grim (and I eat meat). However, there were some great expressions from co-workers: “All hair-cream and no socks”, and “He’d done a stretch in the chokey”, are very real.

Summers talks lovingly about the nice times he had with his grandfather, and this is a delightful sentiment: “In truth, it was his presence I was seeking. In that shed crowded with oiled tools and old things, the anxieties of School Certificate maths, schoolyard hierarchies and my looming, uncertain future all shrank and went still.” I could relate to that.

Elling (Jeff Kingsford-Brown) is an anxious, tic-ridden, satchel-clutching mummy’s boy who has spent an undefined period of his life in a mental institution. His new roommate is the bold, sex-obsessed but virginal Kjell Bjarne (Gavin Rutherford) who takes a dubious approach to personal hygiene. Despite being chalk and cheese, they soon form a strong and empathetic bond such that, when the time comes, they are transferred to an Oslo apartment with the intention that they transition together into the ‘real’ world.

It’s clear from the get-go whose side we’re meant to be on. The health system representatives are hard and uncompromising while Elling and Kjell are sweet and self-aware, so we laugh with them, not at them. And there are laughs aplenty as they bumble through their new reality and the threat of returning to state care if they don’t adjust.

Initially, they retreat into themselves when faced with simple tasks, such as answering the phone or shopping. Then their self-isolated co-dependence is abruptly challenged by the arrival in their lives of heavily pregnant neighbour Reidun (Bronwyn Turei) and veteran poet Alfons (Steven Ray).

Kingsford-Brown and Rutherford give masterful performances in the main roles with nuanced physical and vocal characterisations that render Elling and Kjell as always sympathetic and never ridiculous. We’re drawn into their struggles and want them to triumph.

Turei, Ray, and William Kircher provide expert coverage of the personalities who surround Elling and Kjell. A highlight is Turei and Kircher’s turn as painfully pretentious underground poets at an open mic night.

Andrew Foster’s clean, IKEA-esque set design and the actors’ healthy disregard for the invisible walls gives a pleasing freedom of movement that is beautifully supported by sensitive lighting (Marcus McShane) and sound (Ross Jolly and Niamh Campbell-Ward).

While the chunky knits of the costume design (Sheila Horton) place us firmly in Norway, this story is universal. It’s charming, gently funny, and life-affirming; a wonderful antidote to the winter blues.

With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler, many of us have attended the tale of Sweeney Todd. The musical follows the titular barber (Chris Crowe), who lost his wife and daughter Johanna (Olivia Stewart) to a great injustice at the hands of Judge Turpin (Thomas Barker) and Beadle Bamford (Jthan Morgan) some 15 years ago. Finally released from his internment, Sweeney returns to the “hole in the world like a great black pit” that is London hell-bent on vengeance. Here, he sets up shop with pie maker Mrs. Lovett (Vanessa Stacey) and earns his appellation as The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

It’s fascinating to see a large-scale musical with mammoth production values in an intimate space like Te Auaha. Seated in the very front row, my friend and I are at eye-level with action befitting a grand stage. This is deliciously overwhelming, especially in the ensemble numbers, made magnificent, dizzying by choreographer Greta Casey-Solly and honed to vocal perfection by music director Mark W Dorrell.

Giving us some welcome breathing room, some of the goriest scenes are set further back behind plastic strip curtains reminiscent of a slaughterhouse. Joshua Tucker’s inspired design screams of rank despair… God I love it.   

Both lead actors inhabit their roles in this dark, dank world entirely, Crowe with his thousand-yard stare, Stacey with her wicked spark. Together they are twisted, tormented dynamite. Sending shockwaves down my spine is Crowe’s Epiphany, with his world-class vocals heightened by Stacey’s journey from shock to terror to resignation, all in the shadows.

The blinding talent of the cast comes to the fore in Frankie Leota’s stunning vocal performance as The Beggar Woman; Zane Berghuis’ lovely legato lines in Johanna as Anthony; Stewart’s confident soprano; Ben Paterson’s hilarious turn as Pirelli; Jared Pallesen’s aching Not While I’m Around as Tobias; Barker’s suitably disgusting Johanna (Mea Culpa); and Morgan’s every greasy move. 

Bravo to director Ben Emerson and WITCH Music Theatre. Beyond outstanding.

North & South for me was a refreshing step away from a nightly reading selection heavily featuring robots, treehouses, a hybrid Dogman and flying furballs, and the never-ending speech bubbles that comics afford.

Author and illustrator Sandra Morris has written a delightful and picturesque introduction to the world we live in, the changing seasons, and the animals that coexist with us around the world.

It’s easy to use the book as a talking point about seasons and migration with some of the world’s most wondrous animals, who by their very existence adapt and adjust to the climate and inhabitants around them. The illustrations elevate the words beautifully and are evidence of the author’s many talents.

Most interesting to my eight-year-old was the hoatzin, otherwise known as a stinkbird, as it emits a smell like manure and regurgitates fermented plants to feed its hatchlings. From the pungent aroma of the hoatzin we quickly digressed to conversations about the lifecycle and how prey and predator are ever-changing depending on where you are in the food chain. The awful pungency of the hoatzin means the young chicks are at the mercy of capuchin monkeys, snakes, and birds who are attracted to the smell.

Morris has categorised the animals giving them each a conservation status. The polar bear, for instance, is deemed vulnerable, at high risk of extinction, whereas the green tree python is of low concern with a relatively low risk of extinction. There is a glossary and an index too that will help the most curious of minds to extend their knowledge and vocabulary.

Despite this, my son did become disengaged with the length of North & South and suggested that measurements to show how big the animals are in relation to humans would have been cool. Of course, I hadn’t thought of this, and was reminded how different the world is through a child’s lens and how reading North & South a little and often may just be the way to go.

What makes Alan Bennett’s Two Besides: A Pair of Talking Heads important is the context in which it came to life. The monologues are undoubtedly beautifully written and decidedly iconic, but that they were borne of the pandemic makes them utterly human and essential. Nicholas Hytner’s preface is as much a part of the book as the monologues, for it revisits the process of re-making Talking Heads into a BBC show during the pandemic. He discusses the artistic process and the vital importance art plays, especially theatre with its reliance on physicality, in connecting humanity despite the forced distance of quarantine. His preface is a reflection on how making art is inherently human, and that despite compulsory isolation we remain connected.

The monologues belong to a larger collection of 14, all uncomfortably candid. These two vignettes portray ordinary women, lost and confounded. An Ordinary Woman is a monologue of contrasts. The speaker wrestles with her wants versus what she knows to be acceptable, ordinary. Lust becomes disgust, love devolves into hate, the beautiful mutates into the grotesque, and the abnormal is normalised as she falls in love with the wrong person. The Shrine is a portrait of bereavement. Bennett captures the numbness, emptiness, blandness, and rawness of death. How in overcoming grief your loved one dies twice over. Both monologues are powerful sketches of what it inherently means to be human.

These monologues, already portraits of humanness, were brought to life when our own lives seemed so uncertain, bleak, and detached from one another, making them even more powerful, even more real, even more human. Reading just two made me crave the others. In the context of our larger global story, when we were barred from some of our basic human needs and in which many of us felt less human than ever before, Two Besides: A Pair of Talking Heads becomes a naked portrayal of ourselves, a reminder of our connectedness, our solidarity, and our humanness.

Magic and witches are not normally my bag, but I found this book quite captivating initially. Maria, the lead character, is found as a baby left in the snow by another witch and her story takes flight from there. I got reeled in slowly, despite the magic potions provided in most chapters. Hannah, Maria’s saviour, is the witch all women go to for men troubles, health problems etc. Hannah dishes out potions and probably more importantly, advice. Love potion number nine features in the book, with measures of nine of multiple items including red wine, to be stirred nine times. Some of the potions (old wives’ tales in today’s parlance) are still used today.

There are some gruesome descriptions of both animal and human abuse that I found distressing. But they were witches, and they were different times. Maria’s constant companion is a black crow, a dead giveaway that she’s a witch apparently. Her parents sell her as a maid for a better life and when she’s served her five years, she is free to leave Curaçao to follow her man to Massachusetts via boat. She falls in love age 15 (he’s at least twice her age) and how’s this for speed dating? On their second night together, he vowed he loved her, the third night she was his, on the fourth night he gave her a sapphire, on the fifth a small packet of diamonds and, on the sixth…

Like Hannah, Maria has inherited the gift of helping others and this charming imagery shows how she gains new clients: “The referrals were knots in a rope, buds on a tree, birds that sang to summon others who might need a tonic or a cure.” Alice Hoffman uses old-fashioned language as the novel begins in 1664 and I had to Google ‘scrying’ – foretelling the future.

I found Magic Lessons long and I struggled to stay engaged but wanted to finish it. Obviously, I’m in the minority as the author has 36 published books.

Chosen has been an amazing book to read and brings to light a poetic perspective of Geoff Cochrane’s life. Cochrane writes passionately, expressing the beauty in the ordinary everyday movement of things and coming to terms with ageing and the events leading up to it. In his poems, I felt his joy, sorrow, physical pain, and inner battles with himself.

Starting with his youth, he recollects fond memories of his childhood, the neighbourhood and street that he grew up in, and Wellington in its heyday.

As a young adult, Cochrane recalls his late nights out on the town, his personal habits, and people that have had an impact on his life, whether it be through films, their books, or personal encounters.

Cochrane battles with the realisation of ageing and the fact that his body is starting to let him down, while his mind is still youthful and eager to experience and create more memories.

Knowing that he needs some medical attention but procrastinating a trip to the doctors, he eventually caves and receives both bad and not-so-bad news. This sends him into emotional turmoil regarding his health and he finds it quite ironic that some changes must be made to preserve his mortality.

“Morning drenched grasses. Morning’s grasses, drenched.” Beauty best described through the eyes of Cochrane. His young self observes, appreciates, and absorbs the simplest of surroundings, the natural art on our planet.

While enjoying a cup of coffee at a café, a gentle “soulful pooch” chooses Cochrane out of a crowd to introduce himself to. “He wants to say hello”. Being the one that usually observes his surroundings, he was politely interrupted with a beautiful and uncomplicated meeting of two souls.

The reality of having to acknowledge the inevitable (his life versus death) reveals a battle between fear of death, and coming to terms with accepting the reality of what is to be.

Chosen has been a very easy, yet emotional read. I could relate to Cochrane’s poetry more often than not and reading his point of view was quite intriguing.

Sometimes, as a reviewer, you will attend a performance and wonder how on earth you are going to condense what you just saw into 350 words. Atamira Dance Company’s Te Wheke is one such performance.

Celebrating 21 years of creating significant Māori contemporary dance, Te Wheke is both a tasteful homage to Atamira artists gone by and a look into the company’s journey ahead; the fact that this piece was three years in the making does not go unnoticed.  

The title of the work refers to the octopus and the eight extraordinary dancers and eight choreographers symbolise the eight tentacles of the sea-dwelling creature. Over the course of the evening each dancer is given the opportunity to perform a representation of each tentacle and no two pieces are the same.

The show opens with a dreamy waltz between Sean McDonald and Emma Cosgrave, where the chemistry is simply breathtaking. It then quickly slips into an evocative frenzy of demonic proportions. Accompanied by a backdrop of archival footage and artistic projection, and a cleverly layered soundscape, Te Wheke proves to be a total sensory trip.   

The work weaves together elements of traditional Māori movement and contemporary dance in a way that challenges the dancers and highlights their individual dexterities. Cory-Toalei Roycroft moves as though her body is liquid and her being is on another plane, while Oli Mathiesen shows off his remarkable precision in a solo accompanied by the music of Alien Weaponry. The dancers hold their own in their respective pieces, but their power really comes through in the group sequences where they beautifully synchronise and meld into one essence.

Te Wheke is an excellent exploration of mātauranga Māori and our relationship with the physical and the metaphysical. It delves deeply into the human experience and draws up feelings of unity and identity. There are moments that make you shudder and moments that have you on the edge of your seat. I would see this work again in a heartbeat.

While it’s invigorating to see Latino culture embraced in a big-budget movie musical, this is about the only aspect of In the Heights that feels fresh. Predictable from frame one, musically and emotionally repetitive, and visually sporadic, this one should have stayed on the stage.

Based on the Tony Award-winning musical by Quiara Alegría Hudes and Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton), In the Heights introduces us to Usnavi de la Vega (Anthony Ramos), a bodega owner in Washington Heights, New York, who dreams of reconnecting with his people in the Dominican Republic. With the help of his abuela (Olga Merediz), friends, and Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), the apple of his eye, Usnavi may find he’s been home all along.

It’s hard to believe that a film with hundreds of extras, Latin and hip-hop inspired songs, and people dancing on the sides of buildings could be dull, but here we are. While I can see how this would’ve felt like a ray of sunshine when it first graced the Broadway stage in 2008, in 2021, it’s already outdated. Most characters are stuck, waiting for that big break to come along so they can show the world their potential. Familiar terrain, sure, but many other movie musicals, even recent ones, have managed to make this feel exciting and original. In the Heights feels worn out, tired.

Director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) seems addicted to excess, and it culminates in a whole lot of flourish and a lack of result. The film is vibrant without pause, to the point where I simply needed something – the look, the music, the characters – to change. It’s as if Chu’s storyboards simply read ‘more… more… MORE… roll credits’.

Some catharsis comes courtesy of support players, many of whom manage to bring gravitas to their characters beyond what’s on the page, specifically Corey Hawkins, Jimmy Smits, and Daphne Rubin-Vega. Choreographer Christopher Scott also brings his A game, providing lively dances that I only wish had been captured more effectively. Even with these moments of elation, I found myself breathing a sigh of relief when the credits finally rolled.

Virtuoso Violin was a concert bursting with vitality and joie de vivre, living up to the title of the Orchestra Wellington 2021 season – Virtuoso.

The principal work was Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 2, La Campanella. Paganini was the 19^th century’s violin virtuoso par excellence. The soloist for La Campanella was Orchestra Wellington’s own virtuoso violinist, Amalia Hall. Add to this orchestral works by piano virtuosi Liszt and Chopin and you have a perfect storm of virtuosity.

The opening work, Chopin’s Polonaise Militaire, composed for piano but orchestrated by Glazunov, set the scene with an unrelenting, driving energy.

Hall did a superb job of the concerto. Paganini demands extraordinary technical ability including bow bounces, double stopping, harmonics, and, amazingly, left-handed string plucking while continuing to bow other strings. Hall balanced this virtuosity with a lovely sweetness of tone for the more lyrical parts of the work. She returned to the stage for a spirited solo encore that brought the house down.

Liszt’s Mazeppa tells the story of a young man who is carried on a long journey across Europe, bound naked to his horse by an aristocrat whom he has cuckolded. You can hear the galloping horse traversing vast terrains and then losing its strength and collapsing. The music reflects Mazeppa recovering and joining a group of Cossacks. The second part of the work evokes his subsequent military exploits. Taddei had not finished leaping onto the podium before he was already conducting. This headlong energy was the hallmark of the performance.

The concert concluded with Liszt’s Les Préludes, a significant change of mood. While it had moments of storm and conflict, it was predominantly an ode to the glorious, romantic, and joyful episodes of life. The triumphant conclusion to the work seemed to me to sum up the whole concert. Well done, Orchestra Wellington.

Bruce Delamitri (Max Nunes-Cesar) is a Hollywood hotshot who makes gratuitously violent films in the vein of Quentin Tarantino. When he wins an Oscar to the delight of his producer Karl (Martin Hunt), the critics rage. What message does it send to our most vulnerable members of society when we honour someone who glorifies guns?

Bruce is about to find out. When the infamous Mall Murderers, Wayne (Jonathan Beresford) and Scout (Sara Douglas), break into Bruce’s home while he’s doing the horizontal tango with aspiring actress Brooke Daniels (Stacey O’Brien), his very artistic integrity is in danger. Oops, I mean the thing he’s supposed to care about: his family, estranged wife Farrah (Tammy Peyper) and teenage daughter Velvet (Kaley Lawrence).

Directors Oliver Mander and Isaac Borgman have made some interesting choices for this Wellington Repertory Theatre production, like projecting images (read: visual innuendos) onto a screen that I end up liking after initially suspecting a glitch. Tanisha Wardle’s AV design is quick and clever, cinematising the action but sometimes overmilking the play’s raunchier elements.

Of which there are many! The actors do well to communicate passion and lust, particularly O’Brien, though I won’t spoil the motive of her pantyhose striptease here. Douglas too embodies desire, making Scout’s love for Wayne so believable, she somehow turns a maniac into a likeable character. The chemistry between the two actors and her gift for comedy helps, too.

Not likeable is Bruce. I’d be interested to see a full-on villain interpretation of the character, as Nunes-Cesar’s gentle approach suggests an attempt to portray nuance that isn’t there. I’m blaming the playwright for this, and for the clunky writing that makes Karl suddenly start ranting about the Mall Murderers for no reason, unaware that they are in the very same room as him?

Wellington Repertory Theatre have brought Popcorn to the stage with respectful trigger warnings, high production values, and a committed cast and crew. It’s a hell of a romp, not suitable for the faint-hearted.

While we never get to experience the tension of believing things won’t be neatly tied up with a ribbon, Poppy channels its well-worn story through a vibrant and captivating title character. Though the script leaves nuance to be desired, a strong lead performance from newcomer Libby Hunsdale lays the foundation for a film that manages to delight in all the right places.

Poppy (Hunsdale), a young Kāpiti woman with Down syndrome, wants the same things as the rest of us – love, a career, a life – but finds that others don’t have the same faith in her. As she puts in the grind to earn a mechanics apprenticeship at her family’s garage and navigate her first relationship, her overprotective brother Dave (Ari Boyland) refuses to take his foot off the brake.

It cannot be overstated how comfortably Hunsdale inhabits the frame. Her energy oozes out of the screen, never feeling one-note. Poppy often says exactly what she’s thinking, yet Hunsdale is at her most compelling in quieter moments; the slight sense of ease that washes over her when she is able to make an independent, unobstructed decision. Boyland is also terrific. With his character battling alcoholism, loneliness, guilt, and bankruptcy, there’s a lot to reckon with, but he nails down a tone early and carries it through. However, the rest of the cast, along with the story, is not as consistent.

The script by writer-director Linda Niccol asks a lot of questions and winds up in a rush to answer them. Some subplots, particularly Poppy’s romance with Luke (Seb Hunter), surge in order to make room for others, which leads to some particularly on-the-nose and cringe-worthy moments – a tip fellas, “you’re a bit cheeky, aren’t you?” is not flirting at its finest. Niccol does deserve praise for her direction, which mirrors Poppy’s urgency and, thanks in part to cinematographer Mathew Knight, captures Kāpiti in all its splendour and feels effortlessly cinematic.

While Poppy’s victory feels appropriately triumphant, for the other characters things just work out a bit too perfectly a bit too quickly. With more focus and breathing room, Poppy may have elevated from fun to fantastic.

One minute, Kutisar is putting on his Harvey Norman uniform and the next he wakes up in limbo, unsure whether he got his pants on before suffering the medical event that landed him there. We soon discover that the fate of the former chaiwallah depends on how he behaved on Earth. Kutisar begins to flash back to his younger days running a kulfi shop in Mumbai with Meera, whose people – the Parsi community – have a tradition called a sky burial where they lay their dead out in the towers of silence to be eaten by vultures. When Meera’s grandfather dies, the vultures don’t come. It turns out, in this one-man show and in real life, the birds are facing the fastest mass extinction of all time.   

Playing Kutisar, Meera, and five other characters – a hilarious highlight of which is Meera’s pompous aunty – is Jacob Rajan, who wears a set of oversized teeth as a form of mask to channel multiple larger-than-life personalities with joy and immeasurable talent.

I never lose my place thanks to Rajan’s gift for physical theatre and the transitions, made seamless by composer David Ward’s sound design and D. Andrew Potvin’s lighting design. These production elements transport the audience not just to different times, but through different worlds, where set designer John Verryt’s projected abstract images clarify the setting while enabling our imaginations to run wild. And then there is Jon Coddington’s exceptional, remarkably lifelike puppet, a vulture that at first terrifies me but that I soon learn to appreciate, to love, to mourn. The dancing helped!

Indian Ink’s Paradise or the Impermanence of Ice Cream is an example of a team working together as one airtight unit where each part is vital to the whole. The whole, in this case, is a poignant production that I could not take my eyes off and won’t be able to stop thinking about for a long time to come.

Eat Your Landlord is a full-course meal of student life from chef (director) Ben Ashby. Entrées consist of freezing flat, the main dish certainly is Courtenay Place, add a side of lazy flatmate and uninterested landlord, and top it off with after town kick-on dessert. There is plenty to chew through and a substantial amount to digest later.

A movement-based piece, Eat Your Landlord is highly conceptual. Though I struggled to understand the full storyline, I believe Long Cloud Youth Theatre presents various scenes from the typical student lifestyle. The actors twist and contort themselves into various character tropes, forms, feelings, and situations. A single desperate tenant confronts the massive conglomerate that is their property management firm. Two flatmates attempt diplomatic discussion about dishes and toilet paper within a cage, but formal pretense quickly devolves into carnage. A night in town borders on pagan ritual. The ensemble channels frustration, rage, confusion, helplessness, love, and awe through their bodies into the performance.

Eat Your Landlord makes great use of space. The show is roving; the audience wander around the room while the performance happens around, behind, or above them. I often felt uncomfortable or in the way, as if I stumbled upon a tribal ceremony but was welcome nonetheless. As much as I did feel a part of the performance, I also felt alienated.

The lighting and sound design, both by the talented Bekky Boyce, bring the show together. The ever-dripping tap keeps you alert and on edge, while the brilliant soundtrack brings life to the dank room. The lighting (as well as the mismatched carpeted floor) consists of detachable lamps hooked up to hanging extension cords or bare bulbs creating the dark, stark setting, reminiscent of a dingy, but oh-so-cool student flat.

Though at times too conceptually complex to be accessible, Eat Your Landlord is a one-of-a-kind banquet full of young energy, pointed and overdue protest, and chaotic (but free) student life.

Such clever programming in Virtuoso Voices, the presentation by Orchestra Wellington and Orpheus Choir Wellington of Bartók’s Cantata Profana and Orff’s Carmina Burana! Both composed in the 1930s, and similar in form, Orff’s work has been very popular while Bartók’s striking work is not often performed. By such programming are our musical horizons extended.

Orff’s work is a mostly riotous celebration of the joys of spring, love, lust, and the tavern but with an overtone expressed in the famous opening song, O Fortuna, that life is prone to changing fortunes. The music is energetic, superbly rhythmic, melodic, and contains a variety of styles. Bartók’s musical appeal is less direct and the story is much darker. Subtitled The Nine Enchanted Stags, it tells of brothers brought up to hunt turning into hunted stags, begged by their distraught father to return home but unable to do so.

A double accolade goes to Brent Stewart, a busy timpanist supremo in both works. Stewart is also the music director of Orpheus Choir, responsible for preparing their performance. Bartók demands a lot of the choir without much support from the orchestral parts and sometimes they seemed not fully comfortable. Their performance of Carmina Burana was much more assured, confidently negotiating rhythmic challenges and delivering the contrasting styles, colours, and moods required. The choir’s energy was impressive. Wellington Young Voices and the Celesta Choir, the children’s choirs in Carmina Burana, deserve special mention for the clarity and precision of their singing.

The concert’s virtuoso voices were tenor Amitai Pati, baritone Christian Thurston, and soprano Amelia Berry. They contributed some of the highlights of the concert, particularly in Carmina Burana. Pati’s humorous rendition of a tortured swan roasting on a spit and Berry’s pure tone as she sings of being torn between love and chastity were memorable moments.

I should mention also that Orchestra Wellington was fabulous!

The brief online introduction and lack of a programme makes this NZ International Comedy Festival gem something of a mystery when entering the Dome at BATS. The stage is typically bare for what is apparently a one-man stand-up show, consisting of just the stereotypical microphone, stool, and bottle of nondescript beer. When the lights go down, we hear the expected cheesy night-club introduction over the PA system of Bobby Wood, the self-styled Sage of Hari Hari.

However, Bobby is late and nowhere to be seen. Instead, his kilted and bespectacled mum starts speaking from the front row of the audience. We soon find out why Bobby is late as Mum relates anecdotes and embarrassing stories from his childhood about an overly complex education in how to tell the time and a pathological fear of cuckoo clocks.

After requesting extra cushions for her piles and buoyed up by a glass of red wine, Mum soon takes the microphone and hits her stride. She treats us to a litany of hilarious stories of West Coast farming life involving microwaved beanbags, killer cows, and what happened that time she fell down a hill and broke both her legs.

The highlight is her retelling of a one-night stand with a hulk of a man called Jack Melbourne, with whom she locked eyes across a crowded RSA hall during a storm. With body hair like a dish scourer, he still causes her spasms of lust every time she says his name.

Eventually, Bobby arrives and starts his routine of appalling, farm-related jokes that fall delightfully flat for a sophisticated Wellington audience. Bobby is, in fact, the world’s worst stand-up comedian thanks to his traumatic childhood. We have met his mum, so we totally understand.

Character-based comedy that gently lampoons stereotypes is something Kiwis do particularly well and this show is no exception. It is unexpected, charming, and deliciously funny.

Holly Mathieson opened Fantastique with an enthusiastic, personal perspective on the programme and gave a helpful prompt that the theme was dreams. Having arrived too late to have read the programme notes, this was both very useful and an engaging insight into how she would be directing the performance.

Toru Takemitsu’s Dreamtime (Yume no Toki) made use of a rich variety of percussion and orchestration to create the dream experience and the orchestra gave it their all. I didn’t hear the same images Mathieson had suggested I might, and this served to accentuate the beautifully expressed and strong sense of how personal our dreams can be.

Dorothy Ker’s The Third Dream maximised the percussive possibilities of instruments. Ker’s piece was deeper and more menacing in tone than Takemitsu’s but there was no mistaking the dream context this time either. We are used to the sight of string players plucking at their instruments and sometimes using different bowing techniques, but Ker brought out the percussionist in unexpected places to great effect. The double basses particularly enjoyed their licence to slap, hit, and exploit some of the biggest sound boxes on stage.

Hector Berlioz challenged boundaries when he wrote his Symphonie Fantastique. The five movements describe a romantic narrative, episodes of the composer’s dream, a style which broke new ground in 1830. The treatment of the melodies, the orchestration, and the variety of effects Berlioz used to capture the mood and the story gave the NZSO musicians their chances to shine on the night. As ever, the playing was impeccable. Two harps, substantial brass and woodwind sections, and four timpani as well as many strings meant there were numerous examples of musical magic.

The last word is to congratulate principal bassoon, Robert Weeks. A very fine farewell speech from colleague David Angus told us Weeks is retiring but will continue to follow his dreams.

MLK/FBI is an enlightening, inspiring, and infuriating film from this year’s Doc Edge programme. While many documentaries have recounted Martin Luther King Jr’s rise and untimely demise, director Sam Pollard chooses to focus on his tension with the FBI, enclosing arcs about media influence, racial paranoia, and corruption.

Believing King to be a threat to the “American way of life”, the FBI, as directed by J Edgar Hoover, undertook widespread surveillance of his private activities in the 1960s. By tapping his phones and bugging his home and hotel rooms, they hoped to expose secrets of the minister’s sex life and communist ties. With the release of newly declassified documents, we can dissect the agency’s conduct for the first time.

MLK/FBI forces us to leave the context of the 21^st century behind and observe how King’s plight was received by the American public of the day, as well as the image of the FBI that was proliferated throughout the country. By intercutting clips from various cop shows and advertisements, we are shown how Hoover carefully constructed a portrait of his organisation and its agents: heroic, clean-cut, and white.

Pollard is aware that many stories have been told about King, and thus he doesn’t swerve from his chosen subject, giving the film a concise, lean structure. It is narrated by the likes of King confidants Andrew Young and Clarence Jones, Hoover chronicler Beverly Gage, and former FBI director James Comey, whose appearance forges a connection between Hoover’s investigation of King and his of Donald Trump.

In order to criticise the FBI’s eavesdropping, we must first accept that we too should not be privy to this information. The film creates a fascinating oxymoron; in a contemporary world, where King’s legacy remains influential, we have a responsibility to understand him as a person, but if we so disagree with this behaviour, why are we here? When the tapes are released in 2027, the public will have access to recordings of King’s private affairs, the impact of which remains to be seen.

Anecdotes from MLK/FBI will likely sicken you, as they should, but it stands as a timely, superbly constructed document that all should embrace.

The Royal New Zealand Ballet (RNZB) presented a relaxing evening at the Opera House with an ethereal retelling of Théophile Gautier’s Giselle. Like many of the classics, Giselle could do with a shakeup; a woman dying of a broken heart and accepting the infidelities of her lover may not be so relatable to modern audiences. That said, Giselle was never created for the story, it was created for the appreciation of dance.

Choreographed by Ethan Stiefel and Johan Kobborg, Giselle has become an RNZB staple, and it is easy to see why. The production is an opportunity for the dancers to home in on their technique and immerse themselves in an otherworldly beauty.

As Giselle, Mayu Tanigaito is a force to be reckoned with. She approaches the role with tenderness and remarkable expertise. Giselle is familiar territory for Tanigaito and it is clear that the character holds a special place in her repertoire. Extended sections en-pointe leave the audience breathless and her connection with fellow dancers is unflappable.

Laurynas Vėjalis and Paul Matthews perform the roles of Albrecht and Hilarion, Giselle’s besotted lovers. Vėjalis and Matthews are two sides of a coin, Vėjalis playing the refined nobleman with graceful leaps and pirouettes, while Matthews is a little more audacious and forceful in his movements. But both are striking to watch.

In the second act we enter darker territory with the cheating Albrecht haunted by his role in Giselle’s death. Led by a delicate Sara Garbowski, a stunning corps de ballet dance as the ghostly Wilis, creating a dreamy sequence with beautiful lines and delicate footwork. The women of the company deserve an extra round of applause for their poise and cohesion.    

Orchestra Wellington, conducted by the charismatic Hamish McKeich, were a welcome accompaniment and the costume design by Natalia Stewart was outstanding. The overall production value was impressive, and along with the charming performers, it was easy to settle into an evening of escapism.    

Women & Money: Mastering the Struggle can be overly convoluted in parts and with each turn of phrase I’m reminded of reading university textbooks. Though dense and heavy, it is a solid and uncompromising take on all matters financial, the creation of wealth, and the considerations wealth-building requires. Xuccoa knows her subject matter extremely well and uses case studies to help educate. The successes and pitfalls experienced by other women help to personalise circumstances that are relatable.

There’s her simple recommendations and then there’s the complex, but a favourite quick win is her advice to use cash instead of EFTPOS. It’s all too easy to imagine dollars and cents exist in a seemingly endless flow of readily available finance at the sound of plastic being swiped mercilessly through a machine.

Though the title may suggest otherwise, Women & Money is not heavily accented with the woes of women, distinctly disadvantaged by default of their gender. I was able to appreciate where gender may make a difference because of this. Xuccoa’s chapter on Building Today for Tomorrow highlights two of the biggest fears women have: they won’t have enough money to take care of their immediate needs and they’ll be stony broke in their retirement. A sobering thought indeed.

Xuccoa recognises the part emotions play in guiding financial decisions and is encouraging when she speaks to gender differences in investing. Women, she says, are more security-oriented and likely to seek steady returns rather than exceptionally high ones. This leads to them making sound investment choices over time.

Women & Money is about adopting a ‘whole-life’ approach to money and wealth. Taking control and not leaving it to chance or another individual to determine your financial goals and ultimately your financial wellbeing. Whether it’s knowledge or steps to start your own business that you desire, Women & Money transverses it all. By recognising your own habits, educating yourself, and getting on top of cash flow management, anything is possible.