Still Is, the final collection by one of New Zealand’s most acclaimed poets, is redolent with recollection, nostalgia, and resignation. How wonderful that the medium of poetry is so uniquely suited to such moods! Here are 90 poems ranging widely over everything from washing lines to a night at the movies to nature in all its glory. Erudition comes near to obscuring meaning at times, but closer acquaintance brings rewards.

In these troubled times actually features hanging out washing! From such a banal-sounding activity, O’Sullivan muses about the messages that might be sent under cover of camisoles, vests, and shirts. “our taut lines / stretching their crisp goodwill / one city, one continent, to another…” represents a grand poetic vision – even if it’s a vision comically undermined by the last three words.

A note of resignation appears in No choice much, any longer in which the poet laments some of the challenges of his vocation and invokes nature and the change of seasons as a comfort. Indeed, nature is celebrated in several other poems, and we are reminded that O’Sullivan lived and gloried in Port Chalmers.

I am bound to revel in To be fair to the Sixties – tempted as I am by the capital letter that justifiably signals such an era – to a prose piece recounting a 21st at Makara Beach with friend Herb “who took a psychedelic starter as we did in those days” and in the company of “a junior lecturer who these days would be cancelled”. O’Sullivan gifts these words to the one of the party left standing: “Silence is poetry bareback, without the horses”.

The National Network gets a going over with Life on air, for example giving O’Sullivan the opportunity to catalogue those birds whose songs are sacrosanct.

Finally, we have The obituarist, our poet’s wry comment on what may be written about him on his death. Vincent O’Sullivan can take comfort from his literary legacy: he’s no longer with us, yet he still is.

Jane Keller and Michael Nicholas Williams have been collaborating for 25 years and produced five shows together of which Leave ‘em Laughing is a celebration. Bedecked in her characteristic sparkles, Keller is a captivating raconteur and singer of lesser-known and often hilarious songs, while Williams tickles the ivories with aplomb alongside her. The intimate and beautifully dressed (Keller and Meredith Dooley) Circa Two stage with lush lighting (Deb McGuire) is the perfect place for this dynamic duo’s scintillating swansong.

Topping and tailing the show is Alto’s Lament, a nod to Keller’s students and torch song for all those musical theatre types with voices that are always consigned to the boring harmonies, ever longing for the melody.

Deftly weaving her own history into the song choices, Keller reminisces about her high-school years with Last One Picked, a funny but angst-ridden remembrance for all those terrible at sport. Bad and sad relationships come under the spotlight with the laugh-inducing 15 Pounds (Away From My Love) and Shattered Illusions, and a heartbreaking Hello, Tom which elicits a sympathetic “Awww” from the audience at the end. The first half closes with a lovely, lovelorn medley of four songs followed by Simple Christmas Wish.

The second half bursts onto the stage with Keller’s trademark knack for the bawdy. The saucy Speaking French, unashamed Getting It, and self-explanatory S&M have us all in stitches and the fun romps on from there.

Keller’s facial expressions are masterful, whether showing us the teenager’s pain at being turned down by a prospective prom date or pouting with the ecstasy of European passion. Her enunciation is impeccable, with every word she sings crystal clear, even when accented in French or Russian. It’s also a joy to hear the snippets of Keller’s own life given narrative verve by K.C. Kelly’s fine dramaturgy.

As the culmination of a quarter-century creative relationship, Leave ‘em Laughing delivers on its promise and is a fitting finish to the one-woman-show career of a musical maven.

Lili Boulanger’s D’un matin de printemps (Of a Spring Morning) was a lovely opening to the evening’s programme. Filled with the usual images of spring, the piece begins with birds singing and new growth bursting forth on trees and flowers. Then, as if the sun rose over the hill and the air warmed rapidly, the mood becomes joyful and lively, signalling the day ahead.

We were pointed east. Just a couple of bars into Maurice Ravel’s song cycle Shéhérazade, Virginie Verrez’s voluptuous mezzo-soprano voice flowed towards us, rich and full and seemingly effortless. The acoustics in the Michael Fowler Centre are excellent but surely, they cannot balance one voice against 60 instrumentalists unless the voice is something special. Verrez used physical and facial expressions to strengthen her illustration of the scenes and atmosphere Ravel described. She was very slightly overwhelmed by the orchestra once or twice, but only for a moment. Guest conductor Stéphane Denève, a storyteller par excellence, guided us through Ravel’s scenes and drew the best from Verrez in a magnificent, high crescendo followed by rich, sumptuous waves of sound from the orchestra.

The storytelling continued with Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life). Six ‘chapters’ tell us about the hero’s life and Strauss uses the power and parts of a large orchestra to great effect. The stage was packed, including a full complement of brass. Nine French horns gave a clue to some of the heroism we would hear. And, as they always do, the NZSO rose to the challenge set before them by Denève. The music told the story but the performance filled out the picture. I could sense euphoria from the musicians on stage at being part of the immense sound they were making, and we could see the satisfaction in Maestro Denève’s stature as we listened to the tale he and his orchestra told.

Gritty and nostalgic, raw and tense, The Bikeriders delves into a slice of American history that has fascinated the world for decades.

Adapted for the screen and directed by Jeff Nichols, The Bikeriders is based on the book of the same name by journalist, activist, and photographer Danny Lyon, who documented and shared the lifestyle of bikers in the American Midwest from 1963 to 1967. Lyon followed the Chicago chapter of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club to capture the life of the American biker gangs, a counterculture movement gaining traction in this period with ramifications that can still be seen today across the world with the likes of the Hells Angels.

Starring Austin Butler as Benny and Jodie Comer as his partner Kathy, the film is made in a pseudo-documentary style with emerging talent Mike Faist as the young journalist. With Tom Hardy as the club’s founder Jimmy at the epicentre of the story, The Bikeriders takes audiences on a journey down the open road, capturing the Vandals’ innocent beginnings through to their eventual criminal transformation. A perfect picture of 1960s Americana, Chad Keith’s exquisite production design is made all the more evocative of the era by Adam Stone’s dusty and faded cinematography.

Though a snapshot of a specific historical movement, The Bikeriders captures an aspect of American culture that can be traced all the way back to the pilgrims. This thread of outcast resilience, of fierce individuality, of carving out one’s place in the world has cropped up time and again throughout the nation’s fraught timeline. From the first immigrants braving the seas to the first gunshot of 1776, from the cowboys to the robber barons, from Manifest Destiny to the Civil Rights Movement, the crux of The Bikeriders is woven through the story of the United States. It’s not unique to these Midwestern motorcycle gangs but something belonging to everyone who has called this land home, inherent in their brave new world and the fabric that makes up the American Dream.

Flawed as she is, since the dawn of her colonial history, America has always represented a dream. A collective ideal, a world full of possibility, a promise that is captured with exquisite sincerity and rawness in The Bikeriders.

An interpretation for the Bridgerton generation, Penny Ashton’s Sense & Sensibility is a comedy tsunami to crest the Austen wave that has surged through Wellington theatre in recent years.

Ashton takes a highly theatrical approach to staging, eschewing the lavish drawing-room sets others have opted for. She instead uses a few simple props, chairs and set pieces on casters that the actors often employ to great comic effect and deftly manoeuvre between scenes with the slick assistance of stage crew (Fay Van Der Meulen and Chenae Phillips). This lack of complexity gives free space to a highly talented cast to create the larger-than-life characters and fully express the wit that inhabits Austen’s pages.

Casting only women to “celebrate a woman denied so much because of her sex” is another brilliant comic touch as four of the six ensemble cast play the men (and women) in the lives of the Dashwood sisters, stoic Elinor (Adriana Calabrese) and emotional Marianne (Lily Tyler Moore). Amy Tarleton, Heather O’Carroll, Bronwyn Turei (Ngāti Porou), and Aimée Sullivan are endlessly creative with the handful of parts they each play. Sending up male stereotypes as only women can do, they bring a new level of entertainment to a classic story. The chemistry between the Dashwood sisters is authentic and Calabrese and Tyler Moore are perfectly cast.

The soundtrack (Ashton again) plays a strong supporting role with its rousing classical music and shameless plundering of the Bridgerton playbook with string quartet versions of Katy Perry, Eurythmics, Bonnie Tyler, and more. And in true Ashton fashion, the script slips in references to Dickens, a sneaky homage to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and a hilariously meta aside to Bridgerton itself.

Ashton has managed to walk the fine line between making a two-and-a-half-hour show continuously engaging and preserving the emotional heart of Austen’s timeless story. I’ve never cried at an Austen performance before but must admit to a wee tear in the eye at the end of this one, such is its magic.

In the words of the great Antonio Bam-bino Go-Figaro Caravan, the world outside is cold, dark, and complicated. But inside, it’s hot. Oh, so hot!

Revel is a brand-new variety cabaret and cocktail experience by Wellington contemporary circus company Inverted Citizens. Featuring pre-show entertainment served up with cocktails by The Tasting Room, it marries drag and dance with clowning and chaos, harmonies and hoop with music, madness, and merriment to spectacular, sparkly effect.

Performers each deliver an act per half, with introductions and interludes by MC Antonio Bam-bino Go-Figaro Caravan (Nino Raphael) and his trusty assistant, Booth. Some transitions are so charming, silly, and fun that they become highlights in and of themselves, particularly when other performers get involved (here’s looking at you Selina Simone, segueing and sashaying away). In addition to the sheer talent on display, the flow of this cabaret, punctuated by electric interactions between acts, sets it apart from other variety shows I’ve seen in the past.

And now, onto the acts!  Drag queen Selina Simone slays with a luminous (in more ways than one) rendition of Thunderstruck from AC/DC, while Laura Oakley as Lulu L’amour on hula hoop (sorry, ‘oola ‘oop) makes our heads spin. I’m still struggling to comprehend how one person can get so many hula hoops to orbit their body with such grace, showmanship, and apparent effortlessness.

Jade Merematira as vocalist Seraphina Night handles mic issues like a pro and delivers some truly stunning renditions of popular songs, with her performance of …Baby One More Time putting me in mind of Postmodern Jukebox. Her live accompaniment of Kiera Fitzgerald as Kiera Narise on aerial hoop (Rolling in the Deep) and chair (If I Ain’t Got You, with Raphael on guitar) adds a shimmer of je ne sais quoi. Fitzgerald’s gravity-defying acts are jaw-dropping. And we cannot forget Booth’s sultry ode to the microphone, I Want to Know What Love Is.

When I close my eyes and think of Revel, I see rouge, sequins, smiles. I hear laughter, lively chatter, upbeat swing. And I feel joy, warmth… nay, hot! Oh, so hot! Here’s hoping this becomes a permanent fixture on Wellington’s events calendar.

This year’s impressive performance from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra National Youth Orchestra, Te Tira Pūoro Rangatahi, marked the NYO’s 65^th anniversary and was attended by a packed house.

The musicians of the NYO are selected annually from auditionees and meet in Wellington for one week of intensive rehearsals ahead of concerts in Wellington and Palmerston North. The musicians are all under the age of 25, and the scheme provides an invaluable opportunity to play in a full orchestra with professional conductors and soloists. They also receive mentoring from the musicians of the NZSO, many of whom were seen in attendance on Friday night. Conductor Tianyi Lu took time to acknowledge the hard work of the 85 young musicians, and the support of their families and music teachers.

The short rehearsal period and the fact that these musicians are not accustomed to playing together made the ambitious scale of the repertoire all the more impressive. The evening opened with the world premiere of Jessie Leov’s Speculations on a Rainbow. Leov is the 2024 National Youth Orchestra Composer-in-Residence and will soon be travelling to Princeton University to workshop with the Edward T. Cone Composition Institute. Speculations on a Rainbow is a response to the work of Aotearoa New Zealand visual artist Judy Millar, and shifts deftly between radiant and reflective moods.

Aram Khachaturian’s piano concerto featured acclaimed 14-year-old Aotearoa New Zealand pianist Shan Liu as the soloist. Liu gave a characteristically virtuosic performance, followed by a generous encore. The final work of the evening, Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5, provided opportunities for each section to shine, and the orchestra achieved a remarkably unified sound. I would like to echo Liu in congratulating everyone involved with the NYO, especially the young musicians. It’s wonderful to see that the future of Aotearoa’s classical music is in such capable hands.

There is possibly no work from the classical period of music more generally known and loved by audiences than Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor. But in the early 19^th century, it broke some conventions of the symphonic form, particularly in that the fourth movement is a choral movement. Taddei noted in his spoken introduction that the work was consequential, influencing the development of music significantly.

The opera composer, Verdi, considered that Beethoven did not write well for voices. And truly, I have heard performances where both soloists and choir strain to meet the demands of the work. But on this occasion, my greatest pleasure was the work of the Orpheus Choir; they were terrific. So were the soloists, Emma Pearson (soprano), Margaret Medlyn (alto), Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono (tenor), and Robert Tucker (bass). If I had a quibble about this performance, it would be that Taddei perhaps drove it a bit too fast, at the cost of some beauty of expression. The audience gave it rapturous applause.

The other two items in the concert were 20^th-century works that are neoclassical in style. Prokofiev set out to write his Classical Symphony as he thought Haydn might have written a symphony if living in the 20^th century. Tuneful, playful, bright, cheerful, elegant: it was a delight to hear. Full marks especially to the pairs of flutes and oboes that featured in the fourth movement. What a gift for those players.

The third work of the concert was a piano concerto composed by Germaine Tailleferre, the only female composer in Les Six, an early 20^th-century grouping of French composers. I particularly enjoyed the cross rhythms between the piano and the orchestra in this work, across a variety of moods – jaunty, spiky, stately, and gentle. Pianist Somi Kim was very assured, delivering both delicacy and power.

Screening as part of the French Film Festival, Jeanne du Barry tells the story of the famous courtesan. Though intricate and exquisite, it paints only a partial portrait of a complex and extraordinary human.

Directed by mononymous French actress and filmmaker Maïwenn, the 2023 film Jeanne du Barry lavishly and intimately captures Jeanne’s story. Each scene (production designer Angelo Zamparutti) is beautifully bedecked with the cake-like interiors of the Palace of Versailles, each costume (Jürgen Doering) poised like the most decadent of desserts. Maïwenn harnesses Jeanne’s unconforming air in a performance that is both poised and cheeky. Contrary to popular opinion, I think her chemistry with Johnny Depp’s ageing King Louis XV is tender and emotionally charged. Any sex scenes are spared and left to the imagination of the audience, allowing intimacy to take on a different, less carnal, and distinctly European form, deepening the connection between the monarchical match.

After watching the movie, I too, like the king of France, was besotted by Jeanne. A pants-wearing, powerful woman from the 1700s who refused to lower her gaze sounds like a feminist icon from a fairytale. However, upon further investigation I realised the film portrays an idealised version of Madame du Barry. Neither her social influence nor her more political actions were touched on. I feel that by capturing her wholly, her shortcomings and her strengths, rather than as either a victim like in the film or a conniving and calculating courtesan like in many history books, Jeanne could have been more humanised, and her legacy honoured better.

Jeanne was a woman of duality. Maïwenn refers to her as a “magnificent loser”, while her contemporaries called her a silly creature. She spent lavishly in a time of political turmoil, but in doing so supported the arts and intellectuals. She made a name for herself, taking the future into her own hands, but potentially and unwittingly inciting the French Revolution in the process. She walked a fine line, where every action had its equal opposite reaction. She, like all of us, was flawed, complex, and inherently contradictory. For this she was beautifully human. She was herself, in an era of conformity, against all odds.

I recommend this enchanting drama, but suggest you get to know Jeanne du Barry for yourself first.

Well, since my baby left me… I found a new hormone hell. At least I think that’s what Elvis said.  

Created by EBKM (Yes Yes Yes, Gravity & Grace), Heartbreak Hotel infuses scientific facts with gut-wrenching personal anecdotes to examine what actually happens to our bodies when we’re heartbroken. Karin McCracken stands at the centre of this production, playing a woman in the eye of the storm of a painful breakup. Her ex-boyfriend is played by Simon Leary, who takes on multiple additional roles as Everyone Else, including her doctor, new and unpromising love interest, and gay best friend. Leary’s rockin’ and rollin’ performance of the latter is a show highlight.

I have taken liberties to best describe Heartbreak Hotel by breaking it into three segments, which I’ve called Facts, Songs, and Recollections for ease of reference. In Facts, McCracken delivers scientific, TED Talk-like lectures directly to the audience, her synth behind her, gently humming its pre-programmed tracks (exceptional sound design by Te Aihe Butler). In Songs, McCracken stands at her synth, accompanying herself on this newly learned instrument. Here, she chats – more informally, more personably – with the audience and sings reimagined breakup tracks like I Can’t Make You Love Me. In Recollections, she and Leary enact past encounters, not in chronological order, that together tell the story of the breakup and its aftermath. As the show goes on, these segments become less distinct as the waveforms between them fuzz and distort. Polyphonic overlap, if you will.

I find Facts endlessly fascinating; Songs funny, tender, and well performed; and Recollections both relatable and devastating, particularly in the hands of these gifted actors. The breakup and prelude scenes are incredibly written, wrought with language that speaks a thousand words a sentence and builds a complete picture of a six-year relationship in a mere handful of pages. This is where I caught myself shedding a tear or three.

Filament Eleven 11’s production design sees fluffy pink carpet underfoot and striking LED lights running across the sides and back of the stage. These are cleverly utilised but directly facing the audience, which makes them too bright at times. Equally, the sound levels sometimes result in jarring bursts of ear-splitting club music. These technical hiccups aside, what a show! Heartbreak Hotel will break your heart and comfort it in equal measure, letting you know you’re not alone as you learn, laugh, and just maybe, dare to love again.

Oui, oui, c’est magnifique! Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel The Three Musketeers has been brought to life anew in this rambunctious and rollicking romp across the big screen. What’s more, the journey does not end when the credits roll on The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan, because part two – The Three Musketeers: Milady – is also screening across the region as part of the 2024 French Film Festival.

In its first French cinematic treatment in over 30 years, The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan rivals the already impressive ranks of film renditions. Set in the early 1600s, the battle begins with increasing tension between the ruling Catholics – helmed by King Louis XIII (Louis Garrel) and the power-hungry Cardinal de Richelieu (Eric Ruf) – and the rebellious Protestants. The spirited young swordsman Charles D’Artagnan (François Civil) dreams of joining the king’s elite swordsmen known as the Musketeers. Narrowly escaping death on multiple occasions but plunging headfirst into a deep-seated scheme and the fangs of Milady de Winter (Eva Green), D’Artagnan befriends three of the most formidable Musketeers: Athos (Vincent Cassel), Porthos (Pio Marmaï), and Aramis (Romain Duris). Soon he will find himself at the heart of a royal conspiracy upon which hinges the fate of the entire kingdom.

It’s no wonder this was France’s highest-grossing film of 2023. The script? Génial. The sets? Magnifique. The costumes? Trés chic. The performances? Éclatant! Director Martin Bourboulon’s extravagant €70 million production cuts no corners when it comes to depicting lavish courts or swashbuckling battles, but at the same time does not compromise on either subtleties in dialogue or nuances in performances. In fact, the film strikes the perfect balance between the robust ebullience of a Hollywood blockbuster and the delicate subtlety of a French arthouse picture.

The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan advances first with intrigue, parrying with romance and using humour as a feint, before delivering a final blow through unrestrained and exceptionally choreographed action. Dumas’ sharp text slices through The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan, with contemporary touches slashing across the screen to formulate a perfectly coordinated attack au fer. Strike while you can, and allez to The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan!

Leona Revell is an improv legend from Palmerston North. Regan Taylor is one of The Māori Sidesteps who, surprisingly, has never been on Shortland Street. The newly single 40-somethings had never met… until they swiped right on each other. Before their first date, though, they each accumulated some truly heinous dating stories thanks to the infamous platform that is Tinder.

In FWB: Friends with Boundaries, Revell and Taylor share these encounters in extreme, explicit, exquisite detail. There’s the usual: fake profiles, men proudly displaying the deer they’ve slaughtered, unsolicited pics, and the like. Then there’s the specific, like Lycra-clad cyclists who finish the race in record time, and men with little to no understanding of a woman’s anatomy. No, nothing is “geometric” down there.

And then there’s the deeply personal. In contrast with the rest of the wild romps recounted, Revell and Taylor provide honest and brave glimpses into their past relationships and trauma. The script is perfectly devised – no doubt with support from director and dramaturg Lizzie Tollemache – to incorporate these stories at just the right moments, providing pathos, then comic relief when it is needed most. A more muted, gentler delivery of these vulnerable moments of direct address would imbue FWB with even more emotional resonance.

However, the heightened performance style is hysterically funny when the gifted actors, who sizzle with chemistry on stage, physically reenact their past encounters. With a glint in his eye and an innate sense of comic timing, Taylor gets some of the biggest laughs of the night just from throwaway, unassuming lines thanks to his chef’s-kiss delivery. Revell’s improv background shines through in her charisma and confidence on stage.

Stellar production design decisions made by the ensemble include the use of two suspended frames behind which the performers enact outrageous Tinder profiles, plus a banging playlist featuring a lot of Spice Girls (hallelujah), adding yet more thrill to this rowdy roller coaster ride. Put it all together and you have a production that is at once hilarious and heartfelt, titillating and tender.

Verbatim or documentary theatre, in which the dialogue is drawn directly from interviews with real people, is a powerful medium for telling unknown or forgotten stories. I Carried This illuminates the harsh adoption processes of the 1950s and 60s and their lifelong impact on the young, unmarried mothers who were often coerced to give up their babies. Interviews with several women have been distilled into five dramatic accounts of the grief, loss, anger, and guilt felt by this generation of New Zealand mothers for whom the ripple effects of their past are still in motion.

These women’s stories are told on a spare stage of white cloth hangings with a shallow set of steps and two moveable set pieces, a bar with two stools and a bassinet. These are employed beautifully to inform the movements of three accomplished actors, Wise (Hilary Norris), Middle (playwright Nicola Pauling), and Young (Mycah Keall), representing the seasons of the women’s lives. The lines are split between the three, who work expertly and seamlessly together to form a coherent and unified whole.

The actors not only voice the women themselves but also the men in their lives and the judgemental parents who sent their daughters away to farms or homes for unmarried mothers. The voices of the adoption agencies are represented by a recorded male voice (Regan Taylor). This creative device cleverly divorces the cold institutional tones of authority from the warm passions of these very real women.

As well as internalising the heart-rending loss of their babies, all the women experience some form of contact with their grown-up children. These stories are in some ways more poignant than the beginnings of their journeys as they grapple with expectations met or variously challenged.

I Carried This is a compelling and affecting record of a period in time that seems almost unbelievable now and of the women whose lives continue to be buffeted by the waves of past choices and their consequences.

Based on playwright Helen Vivienne Fletcher’s own experiences, Confessions of a Sleepwalking Insomniac is a solo show about the challenges of living with parasomnia, a sleep disorder involving sleepwalking and night terrors. The character Briar, played by Pauline Ward, lives with this condition and is now also juggling a new relationship, a sick mother, and her best friend living on the other side of the world.

Ward uses excellent physicality to depict what Briar is going through. Dreams and nightmares are presented as palpably real as she somersaults across the stage, her sleeping mind consumed by visions. One particularly distressing scene shows Briar on the floor, panicking as she is unable to move, and Ward’s thoroughly convincing depiction of this moment is evocative and heartbreaking. At times Ward’s narration of the story is a little rushed, the character’s frenzy in relating her experiences losing some of the intent behind the lines, perhaps needing clearer demarcation between ideas to get them across. Similarly, the delivery of humorous moments in the script doesn’t initially engage the audience. However, as the performance continues, Ward’s interactivity is so compelling that her pleading and questioning elicits audible responses from the audience, who are gripped by the emotions of the character.

Mention must be made of the excellent sound design by director Emma Katene, as the tightly cued soundscapes add texture and believability to the events happening on stage. The boxes that make up the set are unified by a pastel palette, and colourful lighting (design by Kate Anderson) is also used effectively to accentuate changes between dream, nightmare, and the different characters that Ward embodies.

I highly recommend Confessions of a Sleepwalking Insomniac, a powerful play that provides a window into understanding the life of someone who experiences a sleeping disorder. The story is moving and imparts great insight. An excellent variety of accessible performances in the show’s season are also available.

Thea is the central character and narrator of this work. She sets the tone and mood of it in the following passage: “I am on maternity leave, which I seem to have taken to with the spirit of an angsty chihuahua.” A vet who specialises in large animal work, she has a husband, two children, and friends with their own troubles too.

She is struggling with priorities, and her tale relates an intense strife to maintain roles, all too often in the face of male condescension. It may not be a fresh complaint, but here it is enlivened by a pervading contrasting of Thea’s work as a vet with her other work in the domestic and family arena. She’s busy palpating rams, enquiring after a bull, and euthanising an elderly cat on the one hand, while contending with piles of laundry, a testy husband, and demanding children on the other.

That’s all in the Before section. The After is dominated by the eponymous ash of the title. Something has erupted – and it’s not just the mountain. The metaphor of disturbance pervades the narrative from now on. There is growing impatience with the men who run the veterinary clinic she works for. The clinic is operating remotely, and the husband is working from home. The tension is palpable.

Interspersed through the book are texts created from other sources. These lend an esoteric aspect that some readers will struggle with. A lengthy notes section acknowledges them.

Intelligence is supposed to be an advantage, but author Louise Wallace makes it sadly clear that intelligence encompassing an awareness of a woman’s place in things and its consequences can only lead to frustration and anger. How did women manage in earlier times? Ah, that can be learned from the musty books purchased at op shops by Thea’s mother-in-law and left handily about the place.

Ash will make angry women angrier. Those of us not yet angry may become aware that eruption is a possibility and, in the face of personal reality grown mountainous, even welcome.

Author Liza Frank states in her introduction that Everyday Folklore: An almanac for the ritual year is “Not your traditional almanac in that it doesn’t provide the times of the tides or the phases of the moon. It does, however, include information about each day that will help you to navigate your way through the year from New Year’s Day to New Year’s Eve regardless of what the year actually is.”

The almanac begins with a folklore key that can be tied to any day of the year, spanning a range of animal, food, plant, and weather lore. Plus, apotropaic magic and the supernatural, calendar customs, celebrations or festivals, competitions, divination, fixed dates or anniversaries, love, luck, the moon and stars, moveable dates, remedies, rituals, and rules. 

The almanac is split into months, each with five categories alongside it: birthstones, flowers, star signs, full moon names, and shopping lists. The shopping list blends everyday things alongside what sounds like ingredients for spells. For instance, the month of June has St John’s wort, lemon-scented soap, sickles and candles, hemp seeds, and nine keys.

Each day of the month includes a snapshot of folklore and a suggestion of something you can do. For example, the 25th of April mentions Anzac biscuits as part of Australia and New Zealand’s food lore. Or the 20th of September simply says to take note of the weather today, tomorrow, and the day after, as from that you’ll be able to predict the weather for October, November, and December. Or that the 27th of November is Pins and Needles Day and what you should do as part of the remedy. 

A resource you can reuse throughout the years, Everyday Folklore: An almanac for the ritual year doesn’t require you to use it daily or even monthly. It’s a way you can brighten your day, learn something, and perhaps even try something new like a chant to reveal who your true love is.

Pav Deconstructed: Pavlova through the eyes of everyday Kiwis is literally an anthology of all things oriented towards the humble pav.

Authors Jac Jenkins and Kathy Derrick – two serious pavlova aficionados who set up their own publishing company, Pavlova Press, to get Pav Deconstructed out into the world – give rise to the iconic dessert. Whether pride-of-place centrepiece of the Christmas table, or standard fare as a housewarming-cum-barbeque offering, wherever it appears, however it’s consumed and experienced, pavlova has a rich history and argue-worthy origins (it’s Kiwi, of course!).

If it’s about a pav mishap, or where family and festivities collide, Pav Deconstructed offers a unique trove of tales where pavlova has played its part. There’s the cat who got the cream, the priest and the pavlova, and the first pav on Mars. With its fruity and pastel-pink cover, Pav Deconstructed is like a walk through the bizarre.

For the cheesy at heart, there’s an included fridge magnet that screams: “You’re the cream on my Pavlova.” In Pav Deconstructed, the art and the kitsch intertwine – pavlova, poetry, pop art, and consumption – in a weird and wacky way. There’s even a song sheet, should you feel inclined to whip out your ukelele for an impromptu serenade to your next pavlova. Whether it’s pavlova the colour, pavlova the style of dress, or pavlova the cocktail, it’s all in there.

There’s no rhyme or reason to many of the stories shared. Some will regale you with the fate of the common pav: down the loo for one, just for it to stubbornly resist and float in all its meringue-like glory. Another will tell you the time that adding aquafaba spelt disaster. Seemingly everyone has an opinion on the pav. Soft, gooey, and fluffy, with the perfect amount of meringue on top… so perfect in fact, you may just want to sing a song to it.

In Pav Deconstructed, Jenkins and Derrick plunge headfirst into pavlova, convinced it is more than just a dessert. “It brings people together,” they say.

Set six months after Bennett’s last novel Better the Blood, Return to Blood finds the series’ heroine Hana Westerman living a quiet life in her childhood home of Tata Bay.

Since her last adventure, Hana’s left the police force and is trying to reconnect with the extended family she left behind. But while she may not be a police officer anymore, it is not long before she is dragged into a new mystery.

Return to Blood is such a great read and has everything I love in a sequel: more thrills, more fun, and most importantly, a greater sense of danger. This time, Hana does not have the cops backing her up, and instead finds herself relying on her wits and resources to bring the book’s killer to justice.

Just like in Better the Blood, the characters make the book a joy to read. Not only do they come to life as if leaping off the page, but the ones we already know and love have evolved and grown since I last met them.

Once again, Hana is the star of the show, this time evoking hints of Tom Selleck in Magnum, P.I. as she runs a parallel investigation alongside the police. And once again, we get to spend time with the book’s suspects and see them as more than just villains. We see them as people – real, genuine people. Bennett’s use of prose is as impressive as ever, and Hana’s latest story keeps me glued to the pages till the very end.  

One of my favourite aspects of Return to Blood is that we don’t only spend time with the bad guys, but with their victims as well. Getting to know them as people and then discovering what happens to them eventually is like a real punch to the gut and draws me closer into Hana’s world.

If you love crime drama and need something to distract you this winter, I cannot recommend this book enough.

What happens after happily ever after? This is the question posed by Femme Natale: The Queen Years and the answer is an R18, mirth-filled catalogue of the woes of child-rearing and sex after 40. It’s co-written and performed by a talented cast of director Fingal Pollock, April Phillips, Jeremy Nelson, Tracey Savage, and Piers Gilbertson. Special guest Megan Connolly greets us when we enter the auditorium as a yawning and grumpy sanitary pad (used) handing out programmes.

A series of short sketches, the production jumps from patronising and competitive soccer mums with kids called Jupiter and Monty to a clever reverse wedding in which the vows become the tenets of divorce, a medieval version of parental angst over technology, a poetically frustrated flight attendant dispensing tea and coffee, and songs about online dating, head lice, and a joyous lack of parental guilt and regret.

Having had more than my fair share of mammograms, I got a big laugh out of the excitable mammary pair (Phillips and Savage) getting their first breast test and squeezing as many boob jokes out of it as possible. The desperate vulva (Phillips) who appears as an interlude between sketches becomes progressively more hilarious as she cavorts with a multi-function pink vibrator (Gilbertson) towards a spectacular climax to the disappointment of her husband’s real, but sadly less performative, genitals (Nelson). Guest writer Pinky Agnew’s contribution delivers one of the funniest sketches of the night in which a grandchild-obsessed nanna peddles plastic toys, Nerf guns, and sugar.

All the performers take on their varying roles with gusto and a complete lack of shame. They are clearly channelling elements of their personal experiences and having a great time doing it. Supported by an effective lighting design (Malcolm Gillett, who also co-wrote a sketch) and some choice music, this is a highly entertaining hour of fun for those post-40 or for younger ones yearning to know what they have (not) to look forward to.

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.