Tag: books

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Music without end: A book of listening

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Music Without End; A book of listening

Roger Horrocks

Atuanui Press

RRP $45.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

We are surrounded by music every day, in our houses, in the public space in shopping malls and with our audio devices and through this soundscape to our lives which we build up a huge sound bank of songs and music. Often, we are not aware of how this music is created but we are conscious of its components such as melody, harmony, rhythm, tempo, dynamics, timbre, texture, and form, which work together to create a piece of music. But we rarely investigate them, they are magically and mysteriously assembled, providing enjoyment and diversion There are many though who become obsessed by what a composer, band  or singer have created and how these creators have seemingly produced something which touches on our psyche, our emotions and our way of seeing the world. There are some writers, composers and philosophers who try and understand this fascination with what music is and what it does.

Roger Horrocksm is deeply interested in this world of music and his new book  “Music Without End; A book of listening” which follows on from his 2022 book “A book of Seeing” delves  into areas of music which will resonate with readers as well as offering new perspectives and insights.

As the author says in his preface “I take a very broad approach … since I am interested in popular music, jazz, classical music contemporary classical sounds and music form non-Western traditions (including, Indian, African and Māori).

This very catholic approach has resulted in a book which covers the musical landscapes which most readers will be aware of but also presents new landscapes which will be new, novel and intriguing sending readers off in a quest for these often unknown composers, musicians and compositions.

The four chapters of the book are Music and Listening: A personal History, On Listening, Interviews and Music without End: A History of Western Classical Music

The opening chapter reads very much like the account many music lovers would write- early encounters with music which stimulated great interest in listening and collecting music. For Horrocks this has led to a very wide interest in both classical and popular music. He recounts his exploration of music with its various interwoven strands such as hearing Vivaldi’s “Four Season as the soundtrack to Kenneth Angers 1953 short film “Eaux d’Artifice” filmed at the Villa d’Este. 

His music education really developed when he spent time in the1960’s is the US One encounter meant that he saw the Merce Cunningham dance groups performing to music by John Cage and David Tudor and also got to talk with John Cage. An encounter with Arab / Andalusian music in a taxi in Paris as well as exposure to the experimental jazz of the of the 1960’s hearing musicians such as Ornette Coleman and archie Shepp

He also includes miscellany of musical events such as a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” at Crystal Palace in 1857 which had an orchestra of 500 and 2000 singers. Providing a New Zealand context, he notes that two years before the concert the infant Auckland Choral Society had performed the work in Auckland.

For the third chapter the author interviewed ten contemporary musicians who offer different perspectives on the Importance of listening, inspiration and process in the creation of music. These include contemporary composers Eve De Castro Robinson and Annea Lockwood, conductor / composer /performer, Petere Scholes and   singer Caitlin Smith,

“Music Without End: A history of Western Classical Music”, is the final chapter in the book takes a broad approach to the history of Western Music. As the author notes, ‘What interests me is the constant evolution of styles and genres, along with development of instruments, venues and technologies.

Here he follows the course of the Western music over 800 years looking at the major periods – Baroque, Romanticism, Late Romanticism, Modernism, as well Atonal Music Serialism and Minimalism, He also devotes space to many of the Russian composers. including Sofia Gubaidulina, Alfred Schnittke and Valentin Silvestrov.

As well as looking at various aspects of music he devotes much of the book in tracing out the historical threads of Western Music he interested is in trying to understand how the music got to be written and the changes in approaches to composition.

In his exploration of the nature of listening he broadens out his enquiry, looking (and listening) at music from various perspectives such as the compositions of John Cage where the music is close to a theoretical or philosophical model.

This exceptional book not only introduces readers to many specialist areas of music, but it does so using an accessible language, providing interesting anecdotes and providing readers with a way of understanding their own approaches to music.

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The Collector: Thomas Cheeseman and the making of the Auckland Museum

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

The Collector; Thomas Cheesemen and the making of the Auckland Museum

Andrew McKay and Richard Wolfe

Massey University Press

RRP $65.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Museums have had a lot of critical press over the past few years, viewed as agents of the colonizers because their collections often contain artifacts taken from colonized countries, and their early practices reinforced colonial ideologies by presenting the colonizer as superior. They functioned as a means of control, where European museums collected objects from voyages of exploration and colonies to showcase their dominance and justify the imperial project. But a major thrust of museums has also been to preserve, interpret, and exhibit the local cultural and scientific heritage serving as a bridge between the past and present by collecting objects, telling stories, and providing a space for people to learn, reflect, and connect with history, art, and science.

That has certainly been the aim of the Auckland Museum and the individuals who initiated it, guided it and developed it. A new book “The Collector; Thomas Cheeseman and the making of the Auckland Museum” tells how the Auckland Museum, like man y other museums in the nineteenth century were guided by visionary individuals.

The newly opened Auckland and Institute in 1876 Thomas Cheeseman stands in the doorway

Authors Andrew McKay and Richard Wolfe write about the establishment of the museum’s first custom-built building in 1876 at the northern end of Princes Street.  When it opened the director was Thomas Cheesman who had been in the post since 1874, remaining in the post remained in that post until his death in 1923.

They write about the original building which was unfavourably compared to the more ambitious Christchurch Museum. It was “plain, improvised and almost invisible … It was housed in an old public building, with little funding and few staff. But that’s what makes the story compelling. The contrast between the buildings isn’t just architectural — it reflects differing levels of civic support, cultural ambition and access to resources. Auckland’s museum didn’t look like much, but it had people with vision, especially Thomas Cheeseman. Over time, he took that underwhelming space and turned it into a serious scientific institution.”

Under his visionary guidance the Museum and its collections flourished, necessitating a further move and the commissioning of a world-wide architectural competition to design a new Museum for Auckland which would be combined with a war memorial to commemorate soldiers lost in World War I. That new museum opened on its current site in 1929.

Not only did Cheesman manage to the institution for nearly fifty years but as a self-taught botanist he travelled the length and breadth of New Zealand, collecting and recording plants, and observing the geography of the country. During his career, Cheeseman also published numerous important papers on a range of flora, described three plant genera, and numerous plant species from New Zealand and the Cook Islands. At the request of the New Zealand government, Cheeseman began his magnum opus, Manual of the New Zealand flora, which was first published in 1906and in 1914 he edited the two-volume work Illustrations of the New Zealand flora.

Thomas Cheeseman

Cheeseman met or corresponded with many of the scientists in New Zealand as well as extensive professional relationships with local and international colleagues, including  the German-born geologist and director of the Canterbury Museum, Julius von Haast, the geologist James Hector of the the Colonial Museum, the geologist, zoologist and museum director Frederick Hutton as well as  Sir Joseph Hooker at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England. 

Early on in his career he even corresponded with Charles Darwin as the authors write. “Charles Darwin was arguably the most famous scientist in the world and also one of the most controversial. And it wasn’t just a lucky moment. Cheeseman’s note was careful, respectful and scientifically rigorous. It showed that he wasn’t just some amateur with an opinion — he was a careful observer who took the work seriously. Darwin saw that. For Cheeseman, it must have been thrilling and validating. It also helped open doors — that exchange helped establish his credibility in the scientific world, and it reinforced the idea that valuable knowledge didn’t just come from Oxford or London, it could come from a young man on the edge of empire, with a sharp mind and a notebook. That Cheeseman dared to write at all — and so confidently — speaks volumes about both his scientific maturity and his quiet self-assurance.”

The book highlights Cheeseman’s efforts to develop the taonga Māori component of the museum and also touches on the ethically sensitive area of collecting the art and culture of Māori noting ‘While Thomas Cheeseman was largely guided by the norms of nineteenth-century science, some of his actions — particularly around the acquisition and display of taonga Māori — now fall into ethically ambiguous, if not outright troubling, territory. His drive to build the Auckland museum’s collections sometimes led him to treat cultural objects as specimens, detached from the communities that made and valued them.

His acquisition methods could also be problematic. In several cases, taonga were obtained through missionary networks, collectors or private sales, often with little documentation about provenance or permission. Cheeseman rarely questioned the ethics of these transactions… These actions were not driven by malice, but rather by an unshakeable belief in the civilising power of museums and the primacy of scientific classification.”

The book tells the history and development of the Auckland Museum and its progress over more than fifty years to the triumph of the building on the present site in Auckland Doman. It also tells of the journey of Thomas Cheeseman who become a great person of influence not just in Auckland but nationally.  The book also gives an account of the changing scientific and cultural landscape of the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century.

It is a well-researched and written book, thoughtfully designed with numerous images which help tell the entwined stories of Cheeseman, the development  of scientific inquiry, the museum and museum’s collections.

Andrew McKay holds a PhD in art history from the University of Auckland and was a Professional Teaching Fellow in the university’s art history department.

Richard Wolfe is an Associate Emeritus of the Auckland War Memorial Museum and from 1978 to 1997 was Curator of Display. He has written numerous books on New Zealand art, history and popular culture.

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Trent Dalton’s “Love Stories”

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Trent Dalton, Love Stories

Based on the book by Trent Dalton
Additional Writing and Story: Trent Dalton and Fiona Franzmann
Adaptor: Tim McGarry
Choreographer & Movement Director Nerida Matthaei
Associate Director Ngoc Phan
Set & Costume Design Renee Mulder
Lighting Design Ben Hughes
Video Design and Cinematographer Craig Wilkinson
Composition & Sound Design Stephen Francis

Civic Theatre

October 17

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Before heading off to see Trent Daltons “Love Stories” a quick survey of what love is was in order. First stop would be Shakespeare, and he almost nails it with

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind” from a Midsummers Night Dream

The audience filled the Civic Theatre and on stage all we see is a panorama of the audience looking back at ourselves. All of those people who know about their own encounters with love. They are the mass of humanity who are hoping to find out the truth / answer to the eternal question. – What is love?. And each one of them knows what it is. Each one can tell their own story

And then scrolling across the screen are the answers we could give, all provided by previous audience members

LOVE IS

Lasting the distance. Even when you think you can’t do it.

The perfect coffee with crema on Sunday morning

Saying sorry and meaning it

Being confident in the silent moment

Magical; poetic, sometimes messy

And dozens more some profound, some very personal, some cliched

Trent Dalton spent two months in 2021 gathering stories on his 1960’s blue Olivetti typewriter, on a prominent street corner in Brisbane’s CBD. He had sign which read “Sentimental writer collecting love stories. Do you have one to share” Speaking with Australians from all walks of life, he received hundreds of them.

The show opened with Jean- Benoit and his drumming as he introduced the show and it closes with his taking us backstage through to a simple doorway which led us back out of the theatrical world of make believe into the real world.

The dozen actors who swarmed the stage enacting the stories, some lasting a few minutes, other only a few brief moments created a topography of love with its range of, stories, anecdotes and remembrances.

Some of the stories are profound, some of them flippant, some of them might have been written by the writers at Hallmark Cards. Other could have been written by your partner, boyfriend, girlfriend.

Director Sam Shepheard wove the various stories together, the actors changing guises as they connected and parted. Sometimes cameras made their faces balloon up large on the screen as they addressed the audience. Many of the stories are moving, rich in compassion, witty, and full of allegories.

The entire cast created impressive range of characters and encounters and there were some clever sequences – a bit of a Juliet speech, a quote from Emily Dickinson, a scientist explaining about technical aspects of dopamine

Holding much of the performance together was Jason Klarwein (the Writer / Husband) and Anna McGahan (The Wife) where the actual world of the couple seems at odds with his accounts of the people from the street with their passionate, flawed and intermingled lives.

And there are several life stories all woven together such as a film segment delivered by Joshua Creamer, a barrister and human rights activist who not only tells his personal story but also the story of land rights, family, and his identity as an Aboriginal man.

There is also the Asian woman Sakuri Tomi whose story is trapped inside a nightmare is told in several vignettes.

The video montages combined with live video feed help create a dynamic flow and the choreography of Nerida Matthaei adds to this dynamism which works brilliantly in sequences like the State of Origin game.

While it’s not in the play they could have used Marilyn Munroe phlegmatic quote about love –  “If you can make a woman laugh, you can make her do anything.

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Victoria Kelly and Rossini take different approaches to Stabat Mater

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Stabat Mater

NZSO
Auckland Town Hall

September 3

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

The NZSO latest concert “Stabat Mater featured two works based on the image of the Virgin Mary standing at the site of Christ’s crucifixion which had led to numerous compositions and art works has which has added to the church’s iconography and rituals.

Rossini’s Stabat Mater complete in 1841 was based on the medieval Latin poem describing the Virgin Mary’s grief at the crucifixion of her son while Victoria Kelly’s Stabat Mater was a response to both Rossini’s work and the medieval text. Kelly’s work was less of a sorrowful meditation on to the event but rather a reflection on the misogynistic nature of the text.

Rossini’s Stabat Mater featured three New Zealand singers: soprano Madison Nonoa, mezzo-soprano Anna Pierard, tenor Filipe Manu along with Australian bass-baritone Jeremy Kleeman.

The singers were joined by Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir, which also performed during Kelly’s new work.

The orchestral opening of Rossini’s Stabat Mater was very operatic contrasting with the low, soft sounds of the choir, as though angelic voices were descending.

The Air that followed had a rather breezy tone and Filipe Manu finely nuance delivery was rich in emotion as he sang about the sword that pierced the Virgins heart. Jeremy Kleeman in a later Air displayed a fine tightly controlled voice with a luxurious sound.

The duet revealed the colourful voice of Madison Nonoa along with the more fulsome sounds of Anna Pierard. Together they were able to convey the torment and grief of the Virgen.

The Quartet which saw the four soloists elegantly interpreted the text, their voices complementing g each other. Their singing did highlight one of the problems with Rossini’s major failing with the work in not assigning characters at the crucifixion to the individual singer – The Virgin, Mary Magdalen, John, the two thieves.

In the Cavatina section Anna Pierard showed drama in her voice along with some terse vibrato and in her Air  Madison Nono started off with barely a whisper which was take up by the choir which turned inti a thunderous sound, her light, piercing  voice seeming to be the Virgin overwhelmed by the choir

In the final quartet the four soloists emphasised their individua voices, seemingly disconnected unfocussed somehow replicating the discord and cacophony which would have occurred during the time of the crucifixion. All this was brought to a conclusion with the chorus and their transcendental Amen.

Victoria Kelly’s response to the medieval text and Rossini use of it “provoked an overwhelming sense of rase and sorrow in me” she has written. Rather than see the texts and the event form a religious perspective she has seen the misogynistic and religious oppression which is tied to much of the church’s teachings. She has taken a revisionist approach and her text for the work is full of critical lines such as

“She wants no choirs castrated,

No congregation tithed,

no people bound and silenced.

no false priests fellated.

The work opening with a low electronic sound leading to the murmuring strings which created a sense of travel or /transition as though we were being transported back to an earlier time.

Much of the time the work sounded like a lament, the sombre singing of the choir and the music interwoven, the text reinforced by the tension and intensity of the choir.

The choir displayed a nice balance between singing and choral speaking their quality, pitch, power, tempo, effective in conveying the meaning and emotion of the work.

The phrase” She does not mourn” occurred several times through the work and was repeated at the conclusion as the words slowly and softly disappeared.

The dark brooding sounds of the final moments of the music contrasted with the angelic voices of the choir and rather than end with a b ang something triumphant like the Rossini it ended with a whimper.

Making her New Zealand debut was Italian conductor Valentina Peleggi whose lively conducting, sweeping gestures and close attention to the soloists and choir ensured an impressive performance.

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Home, Land and Sea

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

The Way Alone Photo credit: Stephen A’Court

Home, Land and Sea

Royal New Zealand Ballet & The New Zealand Dance Company

Kiri te Kanwa Theatre, Aotea Centre, Auckland

July 31

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Choreography: Stephen Baynes, Shaun James Kelly, Moss Te Ururangi Patterson
Music: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Philip Glass, Shayne P. Carter
Set Design: Jon Buswell (Home, Land and Sea)
Costume Design: Stephen Baynes with RNZB Costume Department, Rory William Docherty, Moss Te Ururangi Patterson with RNZB Costume Department
Lighting Design: Jon Buswell, Daniel Wilson

“Home, Land and Sea”, The Royal New Zealand Ballet’s Triple Bill featured three very different works each with a distinctive mood and choreography, all had links to the land with styles ranging from the abstract to the deeply connected.

The opening work, Stephen Baynes’ “The Way Alone” was originally performed in Hong Kong in 2008 for a Tchaikovsky programme and is a response to some of the composers lesser-known music  included some of his choral works. Firmly in the classical tradition the dancing was a direct response to the textures and rhythms of the music. the choreography emphasising the qualities of weightiness, graceful movements and subtle gestures as well as accentuating the dancer’s integration with aspects of light and shadow.

The work owed much to concepts of ritual with an elegance and refinement to the dancing which featured some beautifully articulated pas de deux and pas de trios.

The only problem with this sequence was that the recorded sound lacked the refinement of the dancing and created a disconnection between audio and visual. It was an issue that did not affect the other two works.

Chrysalis, Kate Kadow and Calum Gray Photo credit: Stephen A’Court.

After the first interval was the premiere of  Shaun James Kelly’s “Chrysalis” set to the Phillip Glass music “Metamorphosis” which was inspired by the Franz Kafka short story of  a man who wakes up to find his body has been changed to that of a large insect or chrysalis.

The setting for the dance also gave a nod to Kafka’s other work “The Trial” with various figures, some in trench coats roaming the stage, divesting themselves of items of clothing , an act which provided a clever metaphor for transformation – the shedding of skin and the emergence of the butterfly from the chrysalis.

The music features Glass at his minimalist  best with repeated phrases and  eerie looping sequences. There were also long, enigmatic  silences which were as expressive as the music and emphasised the notions of the dream, the surreal and the transformation.

The musical landscape with its abrupt, stark sounds was echoed by  the dancers with their carefully choreographed movements,  rapid changes and tense interactions.

Home, Land and Sea Photo credit: Stephen A’Court

The  third work on the programme was “Home, Land and Sea” choreographed by Moss Te Ururangi Patterson’s (Ngāti Tūwharetoa), the  Artistic Director of The New Zealand Dance Company. This was the first the Royal New Zealand Ballet has partnered with The New Zealand Dance Company with members from both companies performing.

The stage featured five panels on which were projected images linked to the dance – tāniko, vegetation, clouds and sea.

The work combined contemporary dance and kapa haka suggesting elements of journey, history and tradition.

The music for the work composed by Shayne P. Carter had a harsh quality to it which was emphasised by the dancing where there was much angularity in the gestures and movements, combining the sinuous quality of contemporary dance with the intensity and athleticism of kapa haka.

The  element of sound often associated with kapa hake -was also much in evidence – slapping, stamping and breathing, all adding to the physicality of the work.

In the latter part of the dance when the dancers became more dynamic and  the music more aggressive, the roiling mass of dancers seemed to become a force of nature transcending their human condition to become god-like in their expression.

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Shakespearean Disappointment

Phoebe McKellar (Juliet) and Theo Dāvid (Romeo) Photo: Andi Crown

Review by Malcolm Calder

Romeo and Juliet

By William Shakespeare

Auckland Theatre Company

Director – Benjamin Kilby-Henson

Design – Dan Williams

Lighting – Filament Eleven 11

Costumes – Daniella Salazar

Sound – Robin Kelly

With Ryan Carter, Liam Coleman, Theo Dāvid, Courteney Eggleton, Jesme Faa’auuga, Isla Mayo, Miriama McDowell, Phoebe McKellar, Jordan Mooney, Meramanji Odedra, Beatriz Romilly and Amanda Tito

Waterfront Theatre – until 9 August

Review by Malcolm Calder

This is a brave attempt by ATC to broaden its audience base and provide a path for younger performers.  And when you’re doing that, a good Shakespeare is a fairly safe bet as it can probably do quite well with younger audiences, meet the needs of traditional adherents and will no doubt fare well with a schools audience.  And ATC is to be acknowledged for that.

Unfortunately, when one looks at the larger theatrical picture, this Romeo and Juliet doesn’t really fare very well.  Especially as a major production by one of this country’s more significant professional companies.  However ATC’s production standards remain fairly high and are arguably this production’s saving grace. 

This Romeo and Juliet is set in a 1960s Verona and I get that – not such a silly idea.  The the overall design is consistent and sometimes works very well indeed with the themes Director Benjamin Kilby-Henson is articulating – youth, love and lyricism.  Chapeaus are due to the entire creative team and his production looks and feels quite stunning.

Dan Williams has generated a well-executed, three-dimensional set, largely articulated with reductive arches, derived some mobility from a well-used billiard table and unusually introduced what looks like a painter’s scaffold that trucks about a Veronian ballroom that is ‘under renovation’ and elsewhere too.  It makes for a splendidly unusual balcony scene.

I wasn’t in Verona in the 1960s, however I did own a pair of vertically-striped trousers a decade later, so I give costumier Daniella Salazar’s costumes a big thumbs up too.  Her use of colour is at times subtle and nuanced and the differences she has drawn between Montague and Capulet families are finely drawn.  Of particular note is the ballroom scene.

But it was the lighting and the soundscape that were the standouts for me.   The Filament 11 designers have introduced some dramatic and highly effective lighting that echoes the sentiments of Shakespeare’s words and the emotions highlighted by the director.  It is also pleasing to see ATC using effective sound reinforcement for actors who often spend more time in front of cameras and on more intimate venues these days than on the comparatively largish Waterfront’s stage.

However, Miriama McDowell aside, the cast struggled with Shakepeare’s words, couplet-ridden though they are

In fact, the whole casting process seemed somehow –  odd.  Generational differences were blurred, there was a rather strange mix of accents, some characters seemed to fit the context while others didn’t, and I’m still trying to work out why there were so many varied approaches.

Music may be the food of love but, as the director has noted, poetic verse is its very life force. Romeo only addresses Juliet in verse and she does likewise.  But sustaining this is very difficult indeed.

Apart from occasional flashes, especially with some of the longer speeches, the net result was one where authority and credibility were just – missing.   At one point it seemed like I was watching a youth company of younger kiwis imagining a Verona they had never visited.   

Miriama McDowell (Whaea Lawrence), however, was very much the exception, actually speaking Shakespeare’s words rather than matching the prevalent declamations of others. Theo Dāvid (Romeo) matched her to some extent leading one to wonder whether their work with the now-long-gone Popup Globe had anything to do with this.

There were a number of unanswered quibbles too: why, for example, did Friar Lawrence became a ‘Whaea’ in this production.  If this really were set in 1960s Tauranga and there two gangs at war with each other it could make sense.  But it is a term never uttered in in Verona in the 1960s.  And perhaps a bit of undersheet nudity was a way of  the simpering unreality of Paris, but that didn’t work for me either.

So thanks for the effort ATC.  But Romeo and Juliet was a disappointment for me.

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Grace Wright, Grand Illusions

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Grace Wright, The Truth Is In The Depths

Grace Wright

Grand Illusions

Gow Langsford, Onehunga

Until July 19

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

“In the beginning how the heavens and earth

Rose out of Chaos:”

John Milton “Paradise Lost”

John Miltons lines at the beginning of Paradise Lost provide a succinct description of Grace Wrights suite of paintings in her show Grand Illusions. Equally the description of Charles Albury’s who was an observer of the effects of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima are also applicable – “We watched that cloud rise. It had every colour of the world up there, beautiful colours. To me it looked like salmon colours, blues, greens.”

Theses impressions  of shape, design and colour are something we also see in  the  images of the heavens taken by NASA revealing what appears to be chaos in the Milky Way and other galaxies.

Grace Wright, The Causes of Seeds, Plants and Fruit

Wright’s paintings conjure up a range of associations, from the of cosmic to the microscopic with some of her images  linked to brain scans and the flares of neurological synapses as in her “The Causes of Seeds Plants and Fruit”.

As with her previous work the artist explores the confluence between abstraction, symbolism and realism with a colour palette echoing the renaissance masters as well as the great Impressionist.

Grace Wright, On the Disposition which Characterizes the Wise

With a lot of her work she appears to have a contemporary take on the Baroque with images such as  “On the Disposition which Characterise the Wise)” with its drama and exuberance. Here the brush strokes suggesting the writhing bodies of baroque paintings in the paintings of Giovanni Battista Gaulli, at the Il Gesu church in Rome.

With “Cosmology” there is a sense of floating diaphanous fabrics in pastel colours while works like “The Causes of Atmospheric Phenomena provide a sense of dramatic skies after a storm .

Grace Wright, Cosmology

The small lively brushstrokes in several of the works suggest small birds in flight (On the Beauty of Song” or carefully described shell forms (Projections). These lively brushstrokes also make the viewer aware of following the mark making of the artist, both the small tentative marks as well as the grand gestures.

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Ruth Cleland’s exploration of the enigmatic quality of concrete

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Ruth Cleland Concrete 3

Ruth Cleland, Concrete

Sumer Fine Art

Until July 22

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

In her latest exhibition ”Concrete” Ruth Cleland continues her interest in the accurate depiction of her environment along with the use of the grid.

Gridding is a technique that has been used by many artists throughout history using horizontal and vertical lines over drawings or photographs for enlargement and transfer purposes.

Cleland uses a grid to transfer images of concrete floors onto board using either graphite pencil or acrylic. These images such as “Concrete Floor 3” ($12,8000) show the polished concrete surface with imbedded scoria along with signs of previous uses and marks.

The works are akin to the work of the Boyle Family who randomly chose sites or parts of the body which they then recreated, the completed work offering new interpretations of the environment or body.

These images of concrete floors could be of the floor of the gallery with its various  sections of ground and polished concrete laid over the years. They are in fact of a supermarket floor that the artist has previously used as subject matter. One image, “Concrete Path” ($12,800) has a more personal connection being the concrete path outside the artist’s home.

These images of concrete are meticulous in their accuracy but the artist shows her skill in the depiction of both ambient light sources as well as overhead lights.

Ruth Cleland, Concrete Floor 1
Ruth Cleland Gris (Concrete Floor 1)

In some cases there is a companion piece to the photorealistic image as with “Concrete Floor 1” and “Grid / Concrete Floor 1” ($12,800 pair). The lines drawn on the grid have been used here to indicate the striations seen in the drawing as well as light intensity. This recording adds to the enigmatic nature of the work suggesting there is an underlying plan or logic inherent in the image itself which the artist has revealed.

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La Clique: A magical and adventurous show

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Tara Boon Image Liam Newth /Auckland Live

La Clique

Cabaret Festival

Civic Theatre

June 3 – 15

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Headlining Auckland’s Cabaret Festival starting this week is La Clique featuring a range of performers with some of them presenting at a press preview.

La Clique has been performing for many years with their performers changing over the years. It was here at the Auckland Arts Festival in 2007 and while some of the performers have changed the class, innovation  and magic is still there.

Performing in the Civic, the show is particularly magical, not just being in the Civic but being on the Civic’s stage. The lights, curtains and apparatus that we never see takes the audience into a very different space and looming over us are the seats of the stalls and balcony  and above them the ceiling of the Civic with its twinkling stars of the solar system.

Tara Boon is a foot juggler which sounds like a pretty easy trick to take to the beach  later in the year,  that is,  until you realise that some people can’t even get their shoes on without becoming a contortionist.  Boon is as dexterous with her feet as ordinary people are with their hands. Resting on her reclining chair, she initially upends an umbrella which showers the stage with red petals and with her act she is able to manipulate up to four oriental umbrellas – on the handle or on their edges.

It’s a simple  slick stylish  act performed to the song “Umbrella” by Mechanical Bride and you keep forgetting how difficult it is to manipulate an umbrella, let alone four of them.

Byron Hutton is a juggler who is as clever with his hands as Boon is with her feet. He manages to juggle with his hands as well as other parts of his body, the  clubs dancing  and cavorting around him in fluid  movements.

He showed his consummate skill a couple of times when he lost a club and instantly caught another from his offsider before moving on to the next routine.

Heather Holliday Image: Liam Newth / Auckland LIve

The act which attracted thy most gasps was the fire eating Queen, Heather Holliday. I’ve seen a few fire eaters before but never up close, so close I could feel the heat of the flames. I know they use low combustion fuels which are less dangerous than things like alcohol and petrol but even so it all looks a bit scary, especially when she takes her flaming batons and drags them across her skin

At the end of her performance, her offsider came on with a flute  full of what I thought was a celebratory glass of champagne. But no. This was a glass full of her flame throwing fluid. She drank the flute and then spouted out a flaming jet like a flamethrower which had all the audience recoiling .

We saw just three acts but on the night, there will be a dozen. It will be a night full of the  sexy, the funny and the dangerous

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Reviews, News and Commentary

The Play That Goes Wrong: skillfully executed chaos

Reviewed by Malcolm Calder

The Mischief Theatre Production of 
THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG  

By Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields

GMG Productions & Stoddart Entertainment Group
Associate director – Anna Marshall
Resident director – Nick Purdie
With Olivia Charalambous, Edmund Eramiha, Tom Hayward, Stephanie Astrid John, Joe Kosky, Jonathan Martin, Jack Buchanan, Anthony Craig and Kira Josephson

ASB Waterfront Theatre, Auckland

Until 1 June

Reviewer Malcolm Calder

The crew were frantically seeking a missing dog called Winston (I thought that was pretty funny from the outset), couldn’t find a missing CD, contending with a tricky door that wouldn’t latch, dealing with a floorboard that seemed have a mind of its own and contending with a mantlepiece wouldn’t mantle.  All this before the show had even started.

Their crew’s efforts were entirely unsuccessful of course and the litany of woes continued once things got underway.  But the teddibly English lads and lasses of the fictitious Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society struggled on in their efforts to ensure their eminently forgettable murder-mystery actually took place, with nowhere near understanding their own characters or, it seemed at times, even the plot.  Not to mention a set that seemed intent on total disintegration.  Their efforts certainly did go wrong and they eventually staggered to a dis-assembled conclusion.

However that’s not what The Play That Went Wrong is all about.  Rather, it uses the context of an amateur theatre production to very quickly hit the spot demonstrating both subtle and in-your-face comic writing, exquisite nuance and a mature command of the farce-wrapped-in-slapstick idiom whilst totally demolishing the fourth wall.

Lewis, Sayer and Shields, formed Mischief Theatre in 2008 and created The Play That Went Wrong while still studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.  Originally titled The Murder Before Christmas, their production opened initially on the Edinburgh Fringe, enjoyed enormous success, moved to a pub on London and then quickly transferred to the West End.  It has been winning accolades around the world ever sinceand has even spawned a range of not unrelated television spinoffs.

This cast is very much an ensemble.  In performance they consummately demonstrate a broad-ranging set of physical theatre skills, demonstrate the importance of timing in making these work and do pretty well in convincing the audience that this is a collection of loosely-linked, impromptu standup snatches despite being a meticulously scripted work.

On Oening Night in Auckland I noticed a couple of rather precious looking luvvies in deep discussion during interval but they appeared to have missed the point entirely.   Deep, thought-provoking, question-raising theatre this is not.  Technique – yes!  But, rather, if set in the context of a funeral parlour, not dissimilar gags, techniques and characters these writers could probably transmogrify it quite readily into The Funeral That Goes Wrong.

After any number of productions that occasionally take themselves a little too seriously, we seem to be on something of a comedy roll of late.  Down at the water-side anyway.  The Play That Goes Wrong is the second bout of hilarity in a row with another soon to follow.