Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

‘Beyond the Barricade’ the music sensation coming to New Zealand next year

John Daly-Peoples

‘Beyond the Barricade’

2027 Nationwide Tour

6 – 17 July 2027

John Daly–Peoples

It seems that New Zealand has fallen in love with the world-wide phenomenon of seeing great musical and cabaret acts of the nineteenth and twentieth century on stage.

Just finished at Q Theatre was “Songs for Nobodies” with Jackie Clak singing the great songs of Judy Garland, Patsy Cline, Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday, and Maria Callas.

In March next year The Auckland Arts Festival will feature “The Choir of Man” which will be full of chart-topping songs — including songs by Queen, Luther Vandross, Sia, Paul Simon, Adele, Guns N’ Roses, Avicii, Katy Perry and more. It boasts a cast of nine blokes who also happen to be tap dancers, slam poets, multi-instrumentalists and powerhouse singers.

Then in July the musical show Beyond the Barricade is set to make a return to New Zealand. Celebrating its 27th anniversary year, this blockbusting production brings the magic, passion, and show-stopping hits of London’s West End and Broadway to audiences across New Zealand in July 2027.

Starring four past principal performers from the West End and UK touring productions of Les Misérables, Beyond the Barricade delivers a two-hour concert packed with iconic songs. Accompanied by a top-tier ensemble of live musicians, the powerhouse cast recreates the orchestrations and harmonies of the world’s most beloved musicals.

From recent sensations including Paddington, Hamilton, and Come From Away, to immortal classics such as The Phantom of the Opera, Chicago, Miss Saigon, and Jesus Christ Superstar, the evening builds to a thrilling finale featuring the powerful music of Les Misérables.

Since its inception, Beyond the Barricade has played to over one million theatregoers worldwide, selling out at venues around the world Next year’s tour will be the show’s third visit to New Zealand, having previously played to packed houses across the country in 2016 and 2018.

A review of the show in the Osussex periodical the UK this year  was typical o0f the review which the show generates.

“Beyond the Barricade have been going for 25 years – and on the evidence of their show at Hawth, they just get better and better.

The brainchild of Andy Reiss and David Fawcett, the show is very simple, but very, very affective.

Its three musicians and four singers (David, Andy, Katie Leeming and Sarah Ryan) belting out songs from some of the most famous musicals – and its of such quality it, at times, sends chills down your spine.

They always end with a few songs from Les Miserables – the show David and Andy met at and that all four singers have played principals in West End’s longest running show.

And even though I have seen Beyond the Barricade umpteen times now, their rendition of One Day More still astonishes me. It’s normally performed by 8 principals and an ensemble of 25. To see it performed impeccably by four singers is incredible and deserves the standing ovation it always gets.

Every show, Andy says, when introducing David: “I am sure you will agree, he is singing better than ever.” And he’s not wrong. Although I can’t stand the song Bring Him Home, there is no denying David absolutely smashes it of the park. But Andy is sounding as good as ever as well, especially in Stars.

But it’s not just about Les Mis. They started with Phantom of the Opera, Sarah wowed us with her vocals in Think of Me, and went on to classic shows like Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar – where Katie shone with her Don’t Cry for Me Argentina and I Don’t Know How to Love Him.

What was nice to see were some newer musicals and, rather fittingly given the date of the show, there were a couple of nice arrangements from Come From Away (although I would have loved to have heard Katie sing Me and the Sky), Hamilton (It’s Quiet Uptown was performed beautifully) and Dear Evan Hansen.

But it was the classics where they really shone and, in my opinion, Andy’s best number was Gethsemane from Jesus Christ Superstar while David’s was Anthem from Chess.

And as well as One Day More, there were some brilliant ensemble pieces including Masquerade from Phantom and what they called their Disney ‘Silly Medley’ which included Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Beyond the Barricade is a wonderful show and I can’t wait to see them numerous times in the next 25 years…”

NEW ZEALAND TOUR DATES & VENUE SCHEDULE

  • Palmerston North — Tuesday, 6 July — Regent Theatre
  • Whanganui — Wednesday, 7 July — Royal Whanganui Opera House
  • Napier — Thursday, 8 July — Municipal Theatre
  • Auckland — Friday, 9 July — Auckland Town Hall
  • Hamilton — Saturday, 10 July — BNZ Theatre
  • Dunedin — Tuesday, 13 July — Regent Theatre
  • Christchurch — Wednesday, 14 July — James Hay Theatre
  • Blenheim — Thursday, 15 July — ASB Theatre Marlborough (Whitehaven Theatre)
  • Wellington — Friday, 16 July — Lower Hutt Event Centre
  • Tauranga — Saturday, 17 July — Baycourt Community & Arts Centre
Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

NZ Trio’s Reverie

NZ Trio Matthias Balzat, Amalia Hall and Somi Kim

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

NZ Trio, Reverie

Auckland Concert Chamber

October 8

Hanna Kulenty – A Cradle Song
Adam Schoenberg – Las Estrellas
Leonard Bernstein – Piano Trio
Karlo Margetić (NZ) – Icarus on Titan (2026 NZTrio / SOUNZ Tarling Trust Commission)
Robert Schumann – Piano Trio No. 3 in g minor

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

The NZ trio’s latest concert “Reverie” is a thoughtful reflection on the nature of the reverie or dream with the music depicting various states of mind or distinctive locations.

The first work on the programme was Polish composer Hanna Kulenty’s “String Quartet no. 4 (A Cradle Song)”. It is a work which is both a celebration of her daughter’s birth as well as lament on her death at the age of ten. The obsessive nature of the work seems to be a means of bringing together the idea of a cradle song for the child as well as a requiem acknowledging her death.

Throughout the work the composer was creating a space and sound between consciousness and nightmare.

The work opened with Matthias Balzat’s hesitant cello seemingly searching for lost chords or notes, fading out once they were found. Somi Kim’s piano delivered a series of rarefied chords followed by Amalia Hall’s violin and the cello creating a sequence of discordant chords and the piano, a series of dramatic single notes.

In the central sequence the two string players used their hands to slide up and down their instrument’s strings seeking abandoned notes as though each instrument was attempting to engage with each other. They became increasingly more frantic in their bowing and the piano more insistent with dramatic chords.

The work ended with what seemed like the plaintive cry of a child.

Adam Schoenberg “Las Estrallas” carried on some of the features of Hanna Kulenty’s work with the music having some eerie and unconventional sounds. The slow methodical piano provided a background to the lyrical sounds of the violin and cello which made the piece very much a reverie as all three performers sought to find peace and equilibrium.

Throughout this piece the three musicians were attentive to each other’s playing, notably in the playing of the syncopated section which exploited the slight variations in the sounds of the three instruments.

One could sense the composer playing with the range of sonic sounds and the instrumental techniques. creating a work which kept hinting at an earlier piece of music while adding a contemporary flourish and flavour.

Leonards Bernstein’s youthful “Piano Trio” is a lively piece showing the composer trying out various musical styles –, classical, a hint of Bach as well a debt to stage and film music some jazz syncopation, blues notes, and dramatic tonal shifts. Much of the music is played by the boisterous cello and violin which show his debt to stage and film music and there was also a hint of Bach, some jazz syncopation, blues notes, and dramatic tonal shifts.

The second movement has a clever use of pizzicato along with staccato piano imitations, and some hectic passages overflowing with rhythmic drive, theatrical flair, and structural confidence.

Bernstein used some of the material from this early work in his 1944 musical On the Town.

The Wellington based composer Karlo Margetic had his Tarling Trust Commission played as part of NZTrio’s tour. The work “Icarus on Titan” imagines the Greek son of Daedalus trying to escape King Minos’s prison but flying too close to the Sun and falling to Earth. It is a cautionary myth about the dangers of hubris and youthful disobedience.

The music is derived from the sounds of science fiction films and the imagined sounds of another planet. The wavering sounds of piano, violin and cello lead to a cacophony of sounds, the wandering sequences suggesting the idea of another planet but soon become the soundtrack to a disturbing mental condition.

With each of the instruments the players extended the sound of the instruments using percussive approach – tapping the keys of the piano, plucking the strings of the cello and violin, sliding the hands over the stings, all creating the eerier sounds of outer space.

Long bowing sequences from the violin and the sawing and rasping sounds of the cello provided a physicality of striking intensity.

The final work on the programme was Robert Schumann’s “Piano Trio No3”. a passionate, stormy work that could be said to mirror the composer’s mental condition at the time and which may have foreshadowed his suicide.

The opening movement with its intense, dark, and sweeping sounds as well as the final movement which links thematic material and rhythmic energy from the earlier movements into a demanding conclusion all provide the listener with a sense of yearning, and ecstasy.

Whatever the intentions of the composer were, the three instrumentalists gave a strong expressive delivery. Their bodies appeared to be in tune with the music as well as each other’s playing. This great rapport saw each player intensely focussed on their individual playing but one was aware that they were part of a group.

Throughout the work there was a sense of the players relentless search for refinement in the music, striving to discover the emotional and spiritual depths of the piece. They seemed to continually propose and answer musical questions of each other, genuinely immersed in their musical conversation which grew in intensity and drama.

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Rooms Volume Two

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Rooms Volume Two

By Jane Ussher and Douglas Lloyd Jenkins

Massey University Press

RRP $90.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

In reviewing Jane Ussher’s previous publication “Rooms”, I noted that New Zealanders have a fascination with homes and interiors evidenced by the sales of numerous magazines on architecture and house interiors. The former mainly deal with the forms, spaces and structures of building with the other focused on objects, decoration and the use of the spaces.

Both these elements are brought together in the new book “Rooms Volume Two” by photographer Jane Ussher and writer Douglas Lloyd Jenkins which looks at the range of interior spaces in New Zealand homes from the small villa through to grand mansions.

It is an eclectic collection which is a mixture of historical, social and aesthetic enquiry. These are not all images of “home beautiful”, but rather ordinary, lived-in homes but lived in with a sense of the interiors reflecting something of the owners rather than reflecting current design trends.

Oriental Bay Appartment, Wellington

The interiors range across New Zealand, from early nineteenth century houses to modern apartments. In some cases the architects or interior designer is noted as are  some of the owner / collectors.

We get glimpses of the interiors of homes by early architects such as William Gummer along with more contemporary architects such as John Scott, Edward Mahoney, Claude Megson and Andrew Patterson.

Jane Ussher says “as I progressed with the photography for the new book it became evident that the majority of houses I was invited into belonged to collectors. Often these treasures had been amassed over decades and they often became the subject or a wonderful addition to the images I was creating.”

“The common denominator was that each space is unique and has been created by individuals with a passion for curating an environment that doesn’t reflect current trends but instead reflects their individual passions”.

Most of the owner / collectors have withheld their names but some of them are happy to be associate with their dwelling including Terry Stringer, Denis O’Connor and Anna Bidwell.

The interiors are filled with a roll call of famous New Zealand artists including – Max Gimblett Richards Killeen, Pamela Wolfe, Peter Robinson, Bill Hammond, Tony Fomison, John Pule, Ralph Hotere, Gordon Walters, Shane Cotton, Gretchen Albrecht, and Milan Mrkusich.

All the interiors and the art works have a sense of being a lived collection, often using every availed square metre of wall space. They are also collections assembled over a long period.

Terrace House,

Some of the collections are focussed or thematic. The Herne Bay villa features historic works spanning more than two hundred years – an image of a reclining Māori Woman based on a photograph by Thomas Pringle around 1900, an 1880 painting of the Pink and White Terraces by John Philemon and Māori carving of a pataka repatriated from the UK there is also a John Weeks painting of a Morocan subject. More contemporary work can be seen with an Alan Miller photograph and a Tony Fomison portrait.

North Shore House, Auckland

Many of these collectors have substantial collections of other objects, ceramics, fabrics, Chinese ceramics and turned wooden objects There is a collection of the work of Mirek Smisek and Ernest Shufflebotham’s who both worked at the Crown Lynn Pottery and there are collections of Maritime paintings and ancestral portraits.

With some of the interiors it is obvious that the owner / collector has had the house designed around the artworks

Some rooms are included because of their use of colour, dramatic contrasts and refined placement of furniture. Other demonstrate the careful architectural design elements while others show how sheer abundance of objects and detail can make an impression.

The Wellington House of Anton Hart and Samantha Turner features a range of artists -sculpture by Terry Stringer, Paul Dibble, Jeff Thomson and Glen Hayward, paintings by Max Gimblett, Euan MacLeod and a Dilana rug by Richard Killeen

A North Shore House owned by an international curator and art advisor as a collection of local and intentional art. There is a Rietveld chair, a screenprint by James Rosenquist, work by Keith Haring and Martin Creed. The New Zealand works include Ralph Hotere, Elliot Collins and a pile of small works by John Reynolds

Jane Ussher’s photography makes all the interiors shine. While the owners have chosen the placements of the art works and the furniture and flowers, Ussher has composed her images to make the best of each of the rooms om each image is an artwork themselves.

Some images like those of the gallery space of the St Clair House, have a stark minimalism which highlights the architecture, carpet, furniture, light and artworks which includes work by Imogen Taylor, Luke Willis Thompson Peter Robinson and Sandrine Pelletier.

Ussher notes about the essay for the book “John Walsh wrote the essay for the first Rooms book. He is such a great architecture writer and I found his insights into my practice so interesting… Douglas Lloyd Jenkins is such a design expert and he has lived in a series of amazing houses filled with objects that his collector’s instincts lead him to. His essay is so instructive — it puts what people are doing in these rooms into historical perspective. Not everyone can draw a convincing design line from Oscar Wilde to Aotearoa, but Douglas can!”

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Jason Greig “Blood is Thicker”

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Jason Greig Blood is Thicker

By Chelsea Nichols and Aaron Lister

Massey University Press

RRP $70.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

New Zealand Gothic has always had a presence on the margins of New Zealand culture making regular appearances in our art, literature and music.

Bill Hammond’s paintings were infused with a Gothic brooding and there are other artists like Ronnie Van Hout who for a long time milked debased Gothic tropes and channelled impulses from other side and there are others like Seraphine Pick and Tony De Lautour.

Recently Jason Greig, one of the great Gothic artists the country has produced has had shows of his work at Wellington City Gallery, The Dowse and the Christchurch City Art Gallery bringing the Gothic images in exquisite chiaroscuro of brooding Heathcliff-like figures, ethereal women, and the grim reaper to new audiences.

With the publication of the book which accompanies his Christchurch show Blood Is Thicker, his images of Gothic shadows, werewolves and Old Masters collide.

Jason Greig, Viking U-Boat (Lemmy)

In this darkly luminous survey, Greig’s monoprints and paintings audiences were introduced to  their ancestors – Goya, Redon, Kollwitz, Doré, Rops revealing a gothic lineage where printer’s ink flows like blood through art history’s veins.

Greig has long been the romantic, old soul of New Zealand art—a maker of haunted worlds and summoner of inner demons, both mythic and human. His work feels conjured from another century, yet belongs utterly to this one: a world where Lemmy from Motörhead sits comfortably alongside the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe.

The book also charts the tumultuous times of Greig facing his addictions and demons, periods in his life which are mirrored in his art of  darkness and shadowy figures. These were times when he identifies with the characters of Robert Louis Stevensons “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mt Hyde”. As he says of his own road to rehabilitation, reading the book helped him gain insights into his own condition.

“I get the book and I start reading it, and this time it all makes sense because I’m taking it really personally was overwhelming, you know, this story about duality, and the duality is multi-layered in itself-good versus evil.”

The writers By Chelsea Nichols and Aaron Lister have spoken about the background to their writing the book. “There was a really important moment for us during Occulture: The Dark Arts, an exhibition Aaron curated at City Gallery Wellington in 2017, which included Jason Greig’s extraordinary series Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Chelsea was in the audience when Aaron and Jason gave a raw and deeply personal conversation about the battle between light and dark that exists in all of us. Blame it on the occult atmosphere of the exhibition, but in that moment she had a strange premonition that one day the three of us would work together on something much bigger.”

“It took almost a decade for the stars — or perhaps the dark forces — to align. The exhibition was originally intended for City Gallery Wellington, but the closure of Civic Square meant it eventually found its home at The Dowse. In hindsight, that turned out to be a gift. The project became much richer because it was shaped by two institutions, two curators, and one shared obsession with Jason’s work. Looking back, it feels less like we chose this project than that it had been patiently waiting for the three of us to catch up.”

“People often imagine Aotearoa art standing in bright, clear light, gazing thoughtfully at majestic mountains. But that’s only half the story. The other half has always been taking place in the shadows behind the shed, beyond the edge of town or just out of sight. Tony Fomison understood that saints and derelicts often wore the same face. Today, a new generation of artists in Aotearoa is pushing that lineage in multiple unexpected directions. Most count Jason Greig as a touchstone. We’ve always produced artists willing to confront death, violence, desire and the uncanny. Jason Greig stands firmly at the bleeding heart of that tradition.”

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

This must be the Island

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

This Must Be the Island — Liga Hanai e Motu

Oceanic conversations

GREGORY O’BRIEN AND JOHN PUHIATAU PULE

Massey University Press

RRP $70.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

“This Must Be the Island” is an extraordinary book – part conversation, part visual diary, part poetry book and an exploration of artistic motivation.

The book follows the poet-artists John Puhiatau Pule and Gregory O’Brien from 2010 as they embark on a voyage of artmaking and travel around the South Pacific, making collaborative etchings, corresponding, writing poetry and immersing themselves in Moana Oceania.

The two artists enjoy and respond to each other’s visions with O’Brien noting “There is an incredible energy, vitality and momentum in John’s poetry and painting. I am in awe of it, rather than being exactly ‘influenced’ or directly affected by it. John is certainly a wise, knowledgeable person to travel with — particularly in the Pacific. One is lifted up.”

Sixteen years on, their collaboration continues to yield a mixture of dreams, memories and a pervasive sense of the joy and wonder of being alive in this part of the world. This Must Be the Island — Liga Hanai e Motu is the story of their creative friendship and an art project as expansive and all-encompassing as the Pacific.

In this diary they write about the mundane events of their daily lives, discoveries and their commitment to exploring their own lives, their writing and their art.

So, the book is a mixture of their drawings, etching and poetry and writings, creating a tapestry of the simple and the profound as they reflect on their journeys, art influences, the practicality of their project.

They also reflect on the 2011 expedition when they were part of a nine artist contingent artists including Phil Dadson, John Reynolds, Elizabeth Thomson and Robin White which voyaged, on the HMNZS Otago, through the subtropical Kermadec region, one of the few remaining near-pristine ocean sites on the planet.

The works they produced in response utilise an abundance of materials, methods, and ideas sourced from Pacific handcrafts, poetry, waiata, jewellery, maritime painting traditions, and scientific photography.

Gregory O’Brien and John Puhiatau Pule

The book has letters from the artists to each other as well as poems by each of them as well as collaborative poems. There are also a number of illustrations taken from each from the artist’s notebooks which add to the  rich tapestry of ideas and reflections.

The book reveals an intriguing and complex dialogue between the two creative minds exploring the Pacific and their interconnected responses to their friendship and journeys.

Reflecting on the genesis and the development of the book O’Brien says “the shape of John’s and my book was entirely determined by the etchings we have made together. There are over 70 reproduced in the book. Once these collaborative images were in place, we both had a strong sense of other materials that would be drawn into the book. Firstly, there were the poems we had written together or separately during the period. Then there were the visual journals which we both keep all the time — those journals wanted to be part of our conversation too.”

“The last component in the book to fall into place was the correspondence, most of it in email form. We have written thousands of emails backwards and forwards. I started reading my way through them (yes, you’re right, I sensibly hadn’t deleted any of them). I soon realised that they told the story of our friendship and our creative work together. And they also tracked our movements — the many places we have been together over the past 16 years: Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Niue, Raoul Island, Tonga, Rapanui, Chile . . .”

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Tapa: Pacific histories in Cloth

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Tapa: Pacific Histories in Cloth

The story of tapa across the Pacific – art, dress, culture and curation.

By Nina Tonga, Rachel Yates and Sean Mallon

Te Papa Press

RRP $95.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Tapa has a history spanning over 2,000 years across the Pacific, originating with early Polynesian and Lapita settlers who carried the knowledge and plant species mainly the mulberry tree across the Pacific.

The various Pacific, communities developed distinct regional traditions and terminology for barkcloth creating beautiful and functional tapa cloth from the inner bark of a range of tropical trees. It’s known by many names across the Pacific – aute in Aotearoa, siapo in Sāmoa, ngatu in Tonga, masi in Fiji, hiapo in Niue, ‘ahu in Tahiti, and kapa in Hawai‘i. It’s used for mats, clothing, hats, paintings, telling stories, and for Pacific peoples living in Aotearoa, observing the customs of their home islands.

Maile Andrade, Wauke dyed with palapalai fern, ‘ukiuki” berries, olena, hau flower, ma’o flower, noni

Tapa creation is deeply tied to women’s art, knowledge, and social status, passed down through familial bloodlines. Historically used for everyday clothing and bedding, tapa evolved into monumental display pieces and sacred items for weddings, funerals, births, and royal ceremonies.

The introduction of European cotton, combined with the influence of Christian missionaries in the 19th century, led to a steep decline in some Pacific communities

European travellers and scientists began recording examples of tapa from the time of Cooks’ voyages with one of the first publications being Alexander Shaw’s A Catalogue of the Different Specimens of Cloth collected in the Three Voyages of Captain Cook (1787):

Throughout the mid-to-late 1800s, 19th-century tapa pieces were increasingly collected by Western voyagers, museums (such as the Auckland War Memorial Museum and figures like Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa, cementing its status both as a living art and an object of global ethnographic interest

In modern times, Indigenous artists, cultural practitioners, and institutions have worked to revive traditional techniques, preserve historical taonga, and connect Pacific communities across the diaspora to their heritage

Now after five years in the making, Te Papa has published “Tapa: Pacific Histories in Cloth” a monumental addition to publications about tapa by by Nina Tonga, Rachel Yates and Sean Mallon.

‘Suka Siti’ (Sugar City) Dame Robin White, artist, Leba Toki, artist, and Bale Jione

The book showcases the vast collections of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Featuring over two hundred tapa from 18 Pacific island nations, from Taiwan to Hawai‘I, the book explores the lineages of tapa making across the Pacific. placing artists and makers at its centre, the authors and contributors of Tapa explore the processes and cultural politics of contemporary tapa making alongside experiences of migration, art, dress, conservation and curatorship that reflect the complex social and cultural lives of tapa cloth.

Many tapa featured in the book have never been published or displayed before. Captured by specialist detailed photography these taonga are brought into focus, with the larger tapa cloths featured on foldout pages.

Co-author Rachel Yates says of the selections for the book, “We had to balance things like visual impact, provenance and style, while doing our best to be attentive to representation. It’s important to note that our choices were shaped not only by the cloths themselves, but also by the histories of collecting that brought them into Te Papa’s care.”

The extensive illustrated spreads of this book will invite any reader to delve deeper into the rich and varied world of tapa and will come away knowing tapa is much more than just a textile. Nina Tonga considers many tapa histories as, “living histories held in memory and practice by makers, families and communities.

Pre-treatment condition of Ngatu, 1940s, Tonga, maker unknown. Te Papa Collection

An unusual Tongan work from the 1940’s is of a Spitfire named Queen Sālote. The maker or makers of the ngatu have carefully depicted a view of the plane as seen from below, capturing the elliptical shape of the wing.

The book is filled with stories, images and information about tapa and those who have created them over many years.

The authors write about notable practitioners of tapa including individuals and groups such as the Pacific Sisters whose practice was often fashion centred in the1990’s. They also mention artists like John Pule whose paintings often referenced Niuean hiapo along with Sulieta Fieme’a Burrows and Tu Emma Gillies whose work has often used European art as subject matter.

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Songs for nobodies at Q

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Jackie Clarke

‘Songs for Nobodies’

By Joanna Murray-Smith

Figment Productions

Q Theatre

Until November 1

Jackie Clarke   Performer
Penny Dodd   Musician
Jennifer Ward-Lealand   Director
Joanna Murray-Smith   Writer
Callum Brodie   Producer
Lachie Oliver-Kerby Sound Designer
Michael Goodwin Lighting Designer and operator
Rachel Marlow Set Designer

Reviewed by Jonh Daly-Peoples

‘Songs for Nobodies’, could be billed as the five female singers who provided the sonic background to the  twentieth century. We meet Judy Garland, Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf and Maria Callas as their lives intersect with five  “nobodies” whose lives are transformed by their encounters

The Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith  comes with good credentials and Auckland audience will have seen her plays recently. There was “Switzerland” at ATC and “Three Little Words” at the PumpHouse and I have seen her brilliant play “Julia”  in Brisbane which charts the political life of Julia Gillard


Jackie Clarke provides a sensational performance as the audience is taken on a musical journey with insights into the lives of some famous singers and their  casual meetings with five  “nobodies”. The songs which she sings include  “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “Crazy,” “Amazing Grace,” and  “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do.”

Highlights of the show are her Edith Piaf singing “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien”  and Maria Callas singing one of Tosa’s arias from the eponymous opera.

This isn’t just five singers belting out their well-known hits, there is a sense of the “nobodies” having their lives changed by encounters with the singers in imagined  settings, the songs, the singers and the environments acting as a backdrop to their changed world and lives.

Through the course of the play she  creates  characters ranging from miserable lavatory attendant who encounters  Judy Garland in a bathroom and fixes he hemline to a fashion reporter trying to get out of fashion reporting by doing a piece on an taciturn Billie Holiday


Director Jennifer Ward-Lealand  has kept the staging simple, with the focus always on Jackie  Clarke  and her remarkable performance in creating the characters of the five distinctive “nobodies” and four singers (she doesn’t try to tackle Callas). She moves effortlessly between the characters giving them personalities and presence along with singing their signature songs.

Pianist Penny Dodd, the sole musician on stage accompanies Clarke with skilful musical direction and just the right amount of volume, never intruding on the singers and providing a sense of being in a nightclub.

‘Songs for Nobodies’ is a theatrical gem with one of New Zealand great voices taking us on an musical journey with emotional depth.

To subscribe or follow New Zealand Arts Review site – www.nzartsreview.org.

The “Follow button” at the bottom right will appear and clicking on that button  will allow you to follow that blog and all future posts will arrive on your email.

Or go to https://nzartsreview.org/blog/, Scroll down and click “Subscribe”

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Picasso: Designed by Paul Smith

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Picasso: Designed by Paul Smith

Curated by Joanne Snrech. Virginie Perdrisot-Cassan and François Dareau (Musée National Picasso–Paris) and Sophie Matthiesson (Auckland Art Gallery)

Auckland Art Gallery

10 Oct 2026 – 1 Feb 2027

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

With the new “Picasso: Designed by Paul Smith” exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery we actually get two shows – a survey of Picasso’s works spanning seventy years as well as an introduction to Paul Smith’s approach to design and his own take on the work of Picasso.

We encounter the crossover between the two artists in the first room of the show where Picasso’s “Head of a Bull” confronts Paul Smith’s sixteen deconstructed bulls head made of handlebars and bicycle seats. Whether this is an homage or just a witty response will colour your appreciation of Smith’s design interventions throughout the show.

His painted walls and others contrived aspects of the show have divided opinions similar to the divided response to the Tate’s “Theatre Picasso” exhibition which has just ended in London. Staged by the contemporary artist Wu Tsang and curator Enrique Fuenteblanca, they transformed the exhibition space into a theatre for displaying over 45 works by Picasso.

But as one commentator in the Arts Dispatch said of the show, “Still, this is Picasso and the works remain impressive, standing on their own merit without the failed framing”. It’s a comment which applies to Paul Smith’s design as well. The works do not really need someone else’s interpretation, in fact, the additions of Paul Smith can often detract from Picassos intent.

This is the first solo exhibition of Picasso’s work in New Zealand in more than 30 years with over 80 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and ceramics from the Musée national Picasso–Paris.

Sir Paul’s designs for the gallery spaces take inspiration from the colours, shapes, patterns and textures of Picasso’s artwork. His designs transform the gallery spaces, creating environments which add or detract from the viewers experience.

Pablo Picasso, Bust of a woman or sailor (study for “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”) Musée national Picasso-Paris

There are many of the spaces where we get a sense of the artist developing his art such as in the Pink Ladies section where “Buste de femme ou de marin” can be seen as a study for” Les Demoiselles d’Avignion” where he has broken down the face into shapes, so the nose, eyes, cheeks and background become geometric splinters.

Then in The Cubist Laboratory room there are several examples of how he and Georges Braque created Cubist abstraction and collage.

There is Picasso’s “Le Sacre-Couer,” the Paris church he lived near to. This is an early example of analytical cubism, where Picasso used sharp geometric shapes, fractured planes, and broken semi-circles to deconstruct the three-dimensional landscape of the hill and church into a flat, abstract composition.

Georges Braque, La Tasse Auckland Art Gallery, Julien and Rosie Robertson Collection

Then there is the more interesting Georges Braque “La Tasse” where the artist has deconstructed a simple cup into a web of intersecting vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines. Rather than rendering a realistic object, the artwork focuses heavily on spatial relationships, shifting perspectives, and the compression of light and shadow.

This work comes from the gallery’s own collection having been gifted by Julien and Rosie Robertson and bought by the Robertsons in 2006 for $2,872,000 USD.  This work and two Picasso’s from the collection are the most impressive works in the exhibition and are fine examples of the artist’s use of colour and makes a real impact.

Many of the works reflect Picasso’s biographical approach to his art. As he says ‘I paint the way some people write an autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages from my diary.’ So, sometimes these diary entries are fulsome while at other times they are like brief notes.

In the Bullfighting Room there are several images of the horse and in “Bullfighting: The Death of the Bullfighter” we see the image of the distressed horse, a subject he had previously used and which would be a major element in his Guernica of 1937.

Pablo Picasso, Bullfighting: Death of the Toreador Musée national Picasso-Paris (Paris, France)

In the “Stripes” Room we encounter several of his portraits where the backgrounds are of stripes. The motif may have derived from the Breton striped shirt which was the standard navy and white stripes, of the French Navy uniform. It was adopted by Picasso while living in the South of France. The striped background in several of his paintings used both as a wallpaper and as a motif which connects many of his works.

Pablo Picasso Le Déjeuner Sur L’herbe après Manet, Musée national Picasso-Paris

One of the most impressive rooms is one devoted to his interpretations of “Le Déjeuner Sur L’herbe” by Manet. Picasso had long shown a great interest in the theme of the nude, and “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe” relates in part to the theme of the artist and his model which figures often in his work.

In adapting” Le déjeuner sur l’herbe” to his own purposes, Picasso was playing with the history of art, with Manet’s legacy and that of the Italian Renaissance with the images of the Renaissance artists Marcantonio Raimondi and Raphael whose work had inspired the Manet work.

Picasso likes the image which fitted in with his many depictions of the artist and his nude model. He produced close to 150 paintings and numerous other works featuring the artist and his model. With many of these works Picasso cast himself as a passionate, flawed creator or beast observing or interacting with female figures.

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Jesus Christ Superstar

Reviewed by Malcolm Calder

Luke Street at Gethsemane
Photo Zeus Martinez

Jesus Christ Superstar

Lyrics by Tim Rice, music by Andrew Lloyd Webber

GMG Productions, Crossroads Live and Worklight Productions

Director Timothy Sheader

Set and Costume Design Tom Scutt

Choreography Drew McOnie

Music Director Hugh Hayden-Brown

Asst Choreography Courtney Arango

Assoc Director Alli Coyne

Sound Design Nick Lidster

Music Supervision Tom Deering

Lighting Design Lee Curran

With (Principals) Luke Street, Javon King, Hannah Richardson, Ethan Hardy Benson, Grant Hodges, Kodiak Thompson, Thomas McFerran, Eric W Scheeck, Will Silver

(Ensemble) Joshua Bess, Ashley Chafer, Filippo Coffano, Kalei Cotecson, Joshua Dormor, Savannah Fisher, Elizabeth Fullalove, Icis Hammond, Dominick Hubbard, Jake MacPhee, Thoman McFerran. Jessica Meegan, Caroline Perry, Sandy Redd, Henry Rollo, Erich W Schleck, Will Silver, Jordan Michael Todd

Civic Theatre, Auckland

Booking to 15 November

St James Theatre, Wellington, 18-21 November

Isaac Theatre Royal, Christchurch, 2-6 December

Familiarity Breeds Endearment

Someone once argued that being both familiar and comfortable can induce conflict so they counter each other out.

They were wrong. This Jesus Christ Superstar is both. It doesn’t judge. It doesn’t editorialise. And its basic premise isn’t even debatable. It simply entertains.

As such its very familiarity brings only a very welcome endearment.

Jesus Christ Superstar tells a story about a man and the legend that has shaped civilisations for more than two millenia – whether myth or not. And that’s what good productions are all about – telling a simple story (in this case a fairly well-known one), telling it well and leaving its audiences with happy, satisfied smiles on their faces. It succeeds.

This cast is rather well-credentialled, is drawn from many different parts of the globe, some going right back to this production’s birthplace at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London a few years ago now.

Rather than Jesus, JCS, presents Judas as the fulcrum. NYC and Melbourne based Javon King gives us a Judas of loyalty, happiness, greed, conviction and then ultimately confusion and even regret before his own death. He has light. He has shade. And, as an anti-hero, he shows us an awful lot in between.

He shares influence over Jesus with what I felt was a slightly under-played Mary Magdalene (London-based Hannah Richardson) although her carefully nuanced ‘I don’t Know how to Love Him’ was well-received.

Offsetting them is the humble, confused and, at times, angry central figure of Jesus (fellow-Londoner Luke Street). While Street has played Judas in other iterations, it wasn’t until Jesus’ big song (‘Gethsemane’ in Act 2) that I found him more convincing. So did this audience.

Supporting roles were everywhere. Standouts for me included the Annas-Caiaphus duo and their Pharisees as well as the brief appearance of the deliciously faux-cabaret Pilate. Don’t ask me why, but I found his idiotic and nonchalant antics to somehow echo a certain orange-haired contemporary American politician.

Above all though, it was a joy to see such a well-rehearsed cast laden with slick professionalism eliciting a wide range of emotional responses not to mention a final scene though it would be unfair to detail here.

The set is brilliantly conceived, the costumes fit the purpose and some of the choreography memorably outstanding. However, this IS a gritty rock concert rather than a vaudeville-inspired glammed-up musical and the band, cunningly buried in various parts of an industrial-quality set show it to be just that. An Australian colleague mentioned to me that some audiences across the ditch found this production unduly loud. Not so me ! This IS a rock-musical after all – the hand-held mics tell us that! Yet the strong baseline only managed to kick me in the sternum a couple of times towards the end.

Using the well-documented final days of Christ’s life, JCS of course uses music to connect with a generation that now has grey hair, along with many of their children and more than a sprinkling of grandchildren.

However, it is something of a shock to realise it is now more than fifty years since JCS was birthed. With Andrew Lloyd Webber’s driving rock score it broke new ground at the time and was eagerly awaited – but not entirely.

By the early 1970s we were a decade on from the Beatles and the Stones and a decade where popular music had taken a new direction. For some there were even more serious directions to take. It was a time for concept albums.

And just like The Kinks’s Arthur (or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), or the Who’s Tommy, or Jethro Tull’s Thick As a Brick or even Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, creative musicians had paved the way for Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to tell a well-established story from a book pretty much everyone knows, and found a new way to retell it – bringing Judas more into the scheme of things.

This particular concept album was eagerly awaited. I fondly remember sitting with a group of friends in a rather dingy flat just behind Sydney’s Kings Cross in 1971 and playing it over and over through the night when the long-due LP (remember them?) finally arrived.

But a staged production took a little longer. The Americans had a go but fell foul of dissenting voices – primarily over religious and racial divides (funny how some things don’t change) – and a rage of licensing issues. It took Australian impressario Robert Stigwood to take a punt, lock in the world-wide rights with the creators and convince fellow-Australian Jim Sharman to wave his magic director’s wand over things before it bounced onto the stage at the Westend’s Palace Theatre in 1972.

So while most other rock operas would tell the story of Jesus from the perspective of the man himself (the crossover between lead singer and preacher was a fairly well-trodden area even in 1970), JCS takes Judas’s point of view and throws some sympathetic light upon Mary Magdalene too.

Jesus might have been a charismatic leader, wise beyond his experience and adored by his sychophants. But they are only human. And it is Judas, manipulatively loyal and true, who misguidedly accepts the thirty pieces of silver, while Jesus becomes well aware of what is about to happen to him and resigns himself near-passively to his fate.

Perhaps cynically, I must admit I have always loved the closest thing Webber and Rice got to editorialising when the Apostles sing …

Always hoped that I’d be an apostle,

Knew that I would make it if I tried.

Then when we retire we can write the gospels,

So they’ll still talk about us when we’ve died

Go see it.

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Shane Cotton: Moerewa — Liquid Sleep

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Shane Cotton: Moerewa — Liquid Sleep

Anthony Byrt

Auckland University Press

RRP $89.99

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Anthony Byrt’s new book “Shane Cotton: Moerewa — Liquid Sleep” is more than a biography of one of the country’s foremost artists. Byrt’s Northland whakapapa links him to that of the artist with his documentation and analysis of the artist’s life making the book more of a personal survey and discovery.

Byrt dispenses with the usual early biographical history of the artist (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Hine, Te Uri Taniwha) and his family, beginning the book when Cotton is an almost fully fledged artist.

He traces out the more than thirty years of the artist’s practice with Cotton developing an evolving visual language through which he has confronted his personal, tribal and national histories.

In this voyage into Te Tai Tokerau he deals with the relationships, landscapes and histories that are the basis of Cotton’s thinking and his art. We enter the world of Kororāreka and Hongi Hika, of mission stations and religious ideas which shaped Māori society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Byrt is skilful in providing insights and analysis which help us make sense of the paintings and the thinking of the artist.

He presents Cottons life through six chapters which hint at the artist as being some sort of latter-day prophet, dividing his life and work into six approaches – The Covenant, Mission Station, The First Book, The World Turned Over, White Hole and The Return.

He shows how Cotton has progressively mined the history and myth of Māori along with its intersection with European colonisation, with images that recall stories referencing historical and mythical figures, western and Māori knowledge as well as locations.

Byrt delves into the artist’s work showing the various influences, appropriations, inspirations and interests which have helped shape the artists’ works – artist such as Dick Frizzell and Gordon Walters and his diverse interests such as gaming and gang patches.

His early sepia-coloured paintings in which he linked landscape, symbols and history, Māori Folk Art, Op and Pop as well as Biblical texts explored his thinking about art and the early history of New Zealand.

Shane Cotton, Black Bird (Part I), 2005

Since then, his work has featured brightly coloured targets shapes, preserved heads dramatic cliffs and flower paintings, these works hinting at human and mythic histories.

More recently his works have connected with his living in Northland and revisiting some of his earlier work and the notions of colonialism and cultural exchange.

With his very recent work the artist could be seen as entering his Fauvist period with many of the paintings having the features of those early twentieth century artists who employed simplified shapes along with intense and juxtaposed colours.

Shane Cotton, Super Radiance, 2024

With works such as “Super Radiance” he has appropriated the Augusts Earle painting “Distant View of the Bay of Island”. Depicting a Māori with a taiaha who is acting as a guide through the landscapes of the North. These works connect with his (and the authors) living in Northland and revisiting some of his earlier work with the notions of colonialism and cultural exchange.

Shane Cotton, Things behind the Sun, 2021 (Left) Blue, Black Korona 2020 – 21 (Right)

There are several works of Cotton’s Toi Moko works where the tattooed and preserved Upoke Tuhtuhi Māori heads reference conflict, trade, and repatriations. The tattoo lines tracing out genealogy are linked to the notion of neural connections, knowledge links and computer networks.

Byrt writings about the artists’ iconography provide clarity and depth to our understanding of the artist’s work exploring how the artist adds many dimensions to our understanding to the art and our history.

The fully illustrated book provides an excellent visual history of the artist’s work with some double page spreads which all help in providing an appreciation of the artist’s work.