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
Groundwork: The Art and Writing of Emily Cumming Harris
By Michele Leggott and Catherine Field-Dodgson
Te Papa Press
RRP $60
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
Botanical painters have been an integral part of the botanical and artistic history of New Zealand since Joseph Banks accompanied Cook on his voyage to New Zealand and his publication of detailed illustrations of the exotic plant species he found here.
Since the time of Banks there have been many other artists who have devoted themselves to depicting the flora of New Zealand .A new book “Groundwork” by Michele Leggott and Catherine Field-Dodgson reveals one of the first women botanical artists in New Zealand. Emily Cumming Harris who was born in England in 1837 spent most of her life in New Zealand, mainly in the Taranaki and Nelson areas.
During this time, she painted numerous examples of plant life as well as landscapes, a number of which were exhibited locally and internationally.
Her works were exhibited at the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879, the 1880–81 Melbourne International Exhibition and the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London in 1886. At the New Zealand Industrial Exhibition held in Wellington in 1885 she won first prize and a silver medal for a painted screen.
Emily Cumming Harris, Kiekie (Freycinetia banksii), nikau (Rhopalostylis sapida), five finger (Pseudopanax arboreum) and karaka (Corynocarpus laevigata) in fruit, 1879, watercolour, 389 x 506mm. Reproduced as a Turnbull Library print in 1980. Alexander Turnbull Library,
Throughout her life she also had solo exhibitions, selling a number of works, the sales of which provided useful financial assistance to her and her family.
The book documents her career as an artist and even though this was never to be a full-time career she amassed a large collection of images many of which are in public collections. Leggott and Catherine Field-Dodgson’s research, along with other individuals reveal a woman whose work lies between the scientific, botanical illustration and artistic.
The book has been the result of a lot of detective work, research in various museums and some family history. Michelle Leggott ‘s interest came about when she was researching about Emily’s father, Edwin who had painted several views of New Plymouth at the time of the Land Wars in Taranaki. His paintings are also included in the book.
Emily Cumming Harris, Hector’s tree daisy Brachyglottis hectorii, oil on straw board, 690 x 470mm. Galpin collection, Pauanui
The authors also discovered a number of paintings Emily had done of astronomical subjects – The Total Eclipse of the Sun in1885 and a double tailed comet in 1901.
The book includes a number of her poems which range in quality but the occasional one shows some literary skills and keen observation.
Her “The mountain looks down on the river” contains some lines which indicate an awareness of the situation of Māori.
But the forest which grew by the river,
And the flowers on the mountain that bloomed
Will they gladden our hearts for ever
Or pass like a race that is doomed?
In 1890, she published three books, New Zealand flowers, New Zealand ferns, and New Zealand berries. Each contained twelve lithographs with descriptive text, and some copies were hand-coloured by Harris herself.
Emily Cumming Harris, Celmisia chapmanii – Campbell Island; Celmisia vernicosa – Campbell Island, 1890s, watercolour, 310 x 440mm. Alexander Turnbull Library
All her paintings as well as her writings and poems provide a portrait of a woman of great talent and enterprise but social convention prevented her developing an independent career and she was viewed merely as a gifted illustrator.”
This has meant she has not been well served by history but this book will do much to correct that.
Most stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. Most stories have a central idea, a kernel from which the tale expands like a sinuous river which follows a plot or a life. Other books can have a very different structure as with the new book “You Are Here”.
“You Are Here” which is the sixth book in the “kōrero series”, edited by Lloyd Jones, features Jann Medlicott Acorn Fiction Prize winner Whiti Hereaka and artist Peata Larkin, cousins who share the same whakapapa. in a collaboration. Unlike the previous stories in the collection Larkin’s images are not merely illustrations of the text but rather complementary representations of similar ideas.
Here the story line is cyclical, expanding and contracting. Like James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” the work begins and ends at the same point but with an elaborate structure in between
The poem starts with the line “You are here” and ends with the line – “Return to where you belong”, seemingly following the mathematical notions of the Fibonacci number sequence.
In tracing out the narrative the narrator recalls their youth and their experiences of life. Threaded through this personal journey are images of water and the stones of a lake as well as images of birds and journeys. like the symbolic use of the Piwakawaka by Colin McCahon.
Language, memories and landscape are seen as linked in the development of the narrator, their memories of school and the shaping of the person through language and experiences. the physical and the metaphorically linked in this journey.
Parallel to Hereaka’s storyline are Peata Larkin’s multi-layered visual images in which ideas inherent in the structure of the story are the linked to her exploration of the DNA structure as well as images of Māori design. Drawings of tāniko and whakairo on gridded shapes are linked to European notions of embroidery and mathematical structures.
Peata Larkin says of the work “Working on this project has been very special to me …Being cut from the same cloth enables the threads of the fabric to shine through and hopefully we achieved that.
Hereaka says. ‘It is my hope that by the time you have walked that path that you are now a different reader and will read those words in a new way,’
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Neil Ieremia is one of Aotearoa’s most astonishing and prolific home-based creatives. His ever-growing body of work has easily and unselfconsciously graced stages in many parts of the world and he is rapidly becoming a one-man export machine. In part this is because of his perfectionism that never forgets the past, stands firmly rooted in the present and yet finds time to seriously address the future – sometimes simultaneously.
His works combine different personal histories, different body shapes and abilities, and different musical and dance backgrounds.
May of his works have a strong musical underpinning that ranges from pop to hip hop, traditional to church, coupled with soundscapes that underscore the everyday concerns of young people today. It leaps from recollections of things past to things that might have been and things that are very much of the present, uses the simplest of props and creates some beautiful moments.
His latest work celebrates the company’s 30th year milestone with ‘THIS IS NOT A RETROSPECTIVE’, the ultimate interactive dance party at the Auckland Town Hall, Saturday March 22
Joining Blackl Grace will be CHE FU and THA FEELSTYLE along with the many amazing friends of Black Grace already down to party including; DJ Manuel Bundy, drag queen diva Buckwheat and the NZ Trio, working alongside a stellar production team, with Artistic Direction by Neil Ieremia, ONZM, sound designer Faiumu Matthew Salapu aka Anonymouz, internationally respected NYC-based lighting designer JAX Messenger, along with the incredible Black Grace Dancers.
But the fun doesn’t stop there, Black Grace has a number of special events planned throughout their birthday year. To be in the know join them at blackgrace.co.nz
Main event 1hr 10min, followed by a party which will continue after main event until late
Much of the work of the Danish / Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson focusses on issues around the impact of changing climate on our lives and our impacts on the environment. In his current exhibition “Your Curious Journey” at the Auckland Art Gallery the most obvious of his works which address these issues is “The Glacier Melt series 1999/2019”. In this series of 15 paired photographs the artist shows several; glaciers in Iceland ten years apart showing the extent of the glacier melt. The works are a clear visual documentation of the way in which warming temperatures are changing the nature of the environment. While they provide physical evidence of climate change they are also a metaphor for the issue and many of his other works are metaphorical or medications on the nature of the issues.
Eliasson is the Leonardo da Vinci of our times combining art and science with each of the disciplines informing the other providing observations and insights.
The title of the exhibition “Your Curious Journey” could be applied to the set of photographs as we witness the glaciers journeys of expansion and retraction, alerting us to the fact that climate change is part of the evolutionary journey of our past and future.
Linked to that work is one of the newer pieces, The Last Seven Days of Glacial Ice “(2024) where the progression of a melting block of ice over seven days has been rendered in bronze. The melted water has been captured in seven glass globes which are exhibited alongside the bronzes, The original block of ice is condensed to a shard of bronze and a globe of water but in reality the ice has disappeared, like some magic trick
While these and other works have a polemic quality to them, all his works are concerned with aspects of aesthetics -and scientific enquiry – light, structure, colour and movement. This mix of science and art can also be seen in “Double Spiral” where a long steel tube coils around itself creating a double helix in reference to the structure of DNA
One of the works which encapsulated all of these aspects is “Movement Microscope” (2011), a 16-minute video set in the artists studio / office in Berlin where the everyday activities of the staff become an elaborate dance routine and simple movements are elaborately observed. All the movements and interchanges are heighten by the inclusion of a group of “performers who move at a reduced pace, seemingly moving as though their recorded movements have been filmed at a slower speed.
We observe his designers and artists communicating ideas, working on designs, constructing works, sharing meals, their constructed works now on display in the gallery.
His largest work :”Under the Weather” hangs above the gallery atrium and appears to flicker and change as the observer moves beneath it. The images created are like weather patterns or brain scanner. The illusion of movement is created by an optical effect of two patterns similar to the auditory intersection of the Doppler Effect. Similar effects can be seen “Multiple Shadow House”.
Olafur Eliasson. Yellow Corridor
One of the more impressive works is at the entrance to the show. “Yellow Corridor “is an version of a work the artist has created in m any locations, flooding an area with yellow light which effects our perceptions of colour and form. The almost blinding light of the lit corridor recalls the quote of Robert Oppenheimer who described the Atom Bomb as brighter than a thousand – which also links to Eliasson’s “The Weather Project” which featured a massive sun located in the Tate’s Turbine Hall.
Eliasson also plays with water and in “Beauty (1993), films of misty water, illuminated by projected light create a mini Aurora Australis and with “Object defined by activity (then) a fountain of water is rendered as an almost solid figure by the use of stroboscopic light.
“Still River” brings the issue of climate change down to a local level with three large cubes of ices, slowly melting in the gallery. The ice is frozen water taken form the Waikato River at Lake Whakamaru. We witness the ice melting, see the drops of water falling into the collection tray and hear the sound of the ice cracking and the water melting. We can also see in the water the residue contained in the water – the chemical, effluent and soil and other contaminants.
It provides a physical reminder of the process of the natural world and the ways they can be disrupted.
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Auckland Theatre Company have announced their 2025 Season of six plays ranging from Shakespeare’s 400-year-old Romeo and Juliet to Roger Halls latest.
These plays include two world premieres, an Auckland premiere, and a translation of a one of the classics. The productions will be directed by some of the country’s best talent including Shane Bosher, Oliver Driver, Benjamin, Alison Quigan QSM and Katie Wolfe,
The Plays
a mixtape for maladies by Ahi Karunaharan 4 – 23 Mar Ahi Karunaharan’s talesweeps from 1950s Sri Lanka to modern-day Aotearoa. Directed by Jane Yonge (Scenes from a Yellow Peril) this is both a love letter to Sri Lanka and a lament, the story plays out over 17 songs – ranging from Dusty Springfield to La Bamba to the hit single from a Tamil rom-com.
A collaboration between Agaram Productions, Auckland Theatre Company and Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival.
Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express Adapted for the stage by Ken Ludwig 22 Apr – 10 May The classic that birthed an entire genre comes to the stage with Cameron Rhodes (King Lear, North by Northwest) as the inscrutable Hercule Poirot, supported by Rima Te Wiata, Sophie Henderson, Ryan O’Kane and Mayen Mehta. This play was adapted for the stage by Tony-nominated playwright Ken Ludwig and is directed by Shane Bosher.
Roger Hall’s End of Summer Time 17 Jun – 5 Jul New Zealand’s most successful playwright Sir Roger Hall brings back one of his most famous characters, Dickie Hart who made his first appearance almost 30 years ago in C’mon Black. This is an affectionate and hilarious skewering of an old grump who realises he still has a lot to learn about the world when he moves to Auckland to be closer to his grandkids. Directed by theatre stalwart Alison Quigan, the play sees Andrew Grainger (Peter Pan, North by Northwest) bringing his big-hearted comedic talent to this solo show that like, all of Hall’s plays, has more than a little bite to it.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet 15 Jul – 9 Aug William Shakespeare’s tale of passion and heartbreak is recast as a fast-paced thriller in this large-scale production of Romeo and Juliet, directed by the co-director of 2023’s runaway hit King Lear, Benjamin Kilby-Henson. Theo Dāvid (Shortland Street) and Phoebe McKellar (One Lane Bridge) make their Auckland Theatre Company debuts as the star-crossed lovers in a Missoni and Pucci-inspired take on 1960s’ Italy, supported by a stellar cast including Bronwyn Bradley, Miriama McDowell and Beatriz Romilly. As potent today as it was when written more than four centuries ago, this tragedy celebrates the triumph of love over hate.
Mary
MARY: The Birth of Frankenstein by Jess Sayer 19 Aug – 7 Sep A villa in Switzerland, in the dark winter of 1816. Mary Shelley stands over a bloodied corpse and knows her words are to blame. The script, written by award-winning playwright Jess Sayer in collaboration with Oliver Driver, builds on the bones of history to re-imagine the events of the infamous night that birthed one of the most famous novels of all time: Frankenstein. In Mary: The Birth of Frankenstein, co-created and directed by Oliver Driver (Amadeus), the production transforms from a parlour drama into an unsettling, drug-fueled, lust-drenched Gothic horror as Shelley, played by Olivia Tennet, casts off the men who seek to control her and steps from childhood into life.
Tiri: Te Araroa Woman Far Walking
TIRI: TE ARAROA WOMAN FAR WALKING by Witi Ihimaera 4 – 23 Nov The Season closes out with a history-making new adaptation of the epic tale of Tiri Mahana, a 185-year-old matriarch, from her birth at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi to present day Aotearoa. For the first time, the play will be performed in two parts, English and te reo Māori, with both versions capturing the enduring spirit of Te Ao Māori. With the multi-award-winning team of The Haka Party Incident creator Katie Wolfe (Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Tama) and actor Miriama McDowell (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi); Witi Ihimaera’s (Te Whanau a Kai and Ngāti Porou) extraordinary play will shine once again, re-imagined in te reo Māori by Maioha Allen and company.
Projection Design: Owen McCarthy (Remain), Dan Mace (Whakamaheahea)
With Abbie Rogers, Caleb Heke, Madi Tumataroa, Matiu Hamuera, Oli Mathiesen, Tai Taranui Hemana, Toalei Roycroft,
An Atamira Dance Company production
Q Theatre, Rangitira
Until 27 July
Then Clarence Street Theatre, Hamilton 29 July.
Review by Malcolm Calder
25 July 2024
This significant work comprises two collaborative creations without an interval – Eddie Elliott’s Remain followed by Bianca Hyslop’s Whakamaheahea. Although each could easily stand alone, they are not really a double bill. There is no interval, simply a pause, or perhaps a lengthy segue between the two, and each reflects the other. Hence the title which loosely translates into Before and After.
Elliott’s Remain does far more than simply relate the past and provide a context for today however. It helps to explain that past and how the intertwining of traditions with their origins, social practice and evolution delivers a whakapapa that is as rich with meaning and significance in contemporary Aotearoa as it has been since Ranginui and Papatūānuku.
Elliott has mined the humour and playfulness of everyday life, pride in achievement and evolutionary contributions to making Aotearoa what it is today. And, no, it is far from a sugar-coating. There are brief flashes of anger, resentment and disagreement and, after all, that’s life.
Conversely, Hyslop’s Whakamaheahea takes all this as a given or starting point and looks to the world we live in today while providing a basis for navigating the path ahead. A future that shimmers one moment and then cowers the next. As Hyslop has noted, cultural identity is a continuum and the place of māoritanga is clearly identified and deeplyembedded in the social context of our country.
The dancers provide a strong ensemble quality with individual characters allowed to emerge and some of the solo work is of a high quality indeed.
Of special mention is the creative team who handled the production aspects of this work admirably. It is slick, extremely contemporary and entirely captivating.
Importantly, this work acknowledges and further develops the legacy that is Altamira Dance Company. Yes, there may be some ‘fooling about’ along the way but there is also a strong sense of empowerment, transformation, and resilience that underpins Ka Mua Ka Muri. It has the potential to inspire a bright collective future.
“I feel very strongly that where I’m going is where paintings must go.”
So wrote Colin McCahon in his final letter to his friend Ron O’Reilly. The two of them had been writing to each other for thirty-seven years and in many ways their letters chart the history of McCahon to the point that he was justified in making such as statement.
This statement and other observations about his own art and the development of art in New Zealand over four decades are revealed in new book “Dear Colin, Dear Ron” by Peter Simpson. It adds new dimensions to our knowledge of the life of Colin McCahon as well as exploring the art scene of the 1940’ through to the 1980’s.
“Entombment (after Titian”), oil on cardboard on hardboard, 1947
Simpson has brought together the correspondence of Colin McCahon and O’Reilly who first met in 1938, in Dunedin when McCahon was 19 and O’Reilly 24. They remained close, writing regularly to each other until 1981, when McCahon became too unwell to write.
Their 380 letters, more than 165,000 words covers McCahon’s art practice, the contemporary art scene, ideas, philosophy and the spiritual life. Their letters deal with a wide range of interests and reveal two men deeply committed to the notion that art can make a difference to society ..
O’Reilly was a philosophy graduate who for many years worked for the Canterbury Public Library where he was influential in showing and collecting the work of McCahon. He subsequently became the director of the Govett Brewster Art Gallery.
This regard for each other can be seen when McCahon applied for job at Elam . O’Reilly wrote: ‘After years of viewing, as I know from the works of his that I possess, one is still discovering more in them, is still more and more impressed by the acuteness of the perception, the fineness of the thought and the breadth of the compassion revealed in their artistry. There is no other artist in New Zealand of whom I would say this. It should be clear that I regard Mr McCahon as the foremost painter in New Zealand and a very great man.’
Reilly’s respect for McCahon can be seen throughout the letters along with his intense interest in getting the rest of New Zealand to see the value of the artist’s work and he worked tirelessly to organise exhibitions of the artist’s work.
Their friendship and correspondence brought out the best in each other – intelligence, empathy, compassion, loyalty, trust: these qualities are obvious through the letters as though the two men appreciated that the issues the y were addressing were important to themselves as well as for posterity.
The book is illustrated with 64 images of McCahon’s work along with some of the drawings which the artist included in some of his letters to illustrate idea about composition.
The letters reveal O’Reilly to be a more intellectual and focussed thinker with carefully considered pieces of writing while McCahon’s responses seems to be more urgent but there are many passages of serious reflection.
The book is sprinkled with snippets of information about other artists, exhibitions and the art world generally which provides a sense of the emerging art scene.
There is Ron O’Reilly’s reports on talks by the visiting British critic Herbert read in 1963 and the American critic Clement Greenberg in 1968 where the notions of international versus the local and the local were addressed.
There is also references to the arts politics of various arts institutions, art events and artists. In a couple of letters Ron O’Reilly (at the time the director of the Govett Brewster Art Gallery) writes about Billy Apple who was going to have a show at the gallery. He notes that ”Billy is a good man and a serious and dedicated artist. He is also touchy and won’t play when people want to use him or assume ever so bigheartedly that he is an entertainer cum pervert or treat him as a bum”.
The letters are full of such perceptive observations about artists and institutions. They also provide a fascinating insight into a relationship which is both personal as well as verging on the philosophical and spiritual as they both try to understand their own and each other’s motivations and ideas.
Simpson says there are many interesting comments about the nature of the paintings in the letters. In 1950 “Colin spoke of making changes to Easter Morning, a painting Ron especially liked. Ron wrote: ‘I am sorry you felt the Easter Morning needed altering: no doubt there are things one is trying for which are not achieved to satisfaction: however I wonder if one ever does achieve them by long labour on the same work. That picture had a magnificent feeling: the quiet movement of the women, the expectancy the fulfilment, the lovely early morning light . . . What you do is so good, so good, it doesn’t seem to me to matter much if you leave a painting which is not quite what you want: the development goes on so richly’. Colin replied: ‘About repainting, I don’t know, but I think Picasso is right that nothing is lost the destroyed discovery reappears in a new and better form. The Easter Morning is certainly better. The three women [in The Marys at the Tomb] remain – the alterations are to the angel[;] he has been enlarged & the landscape, lowered & the colour gone from blue to red[;] there is now a warmth as well as early morning coolness & a less cramped appearance to the whole picture.’
McCahon makes many comments about his own work. At one point in 1958 when he was working on the panels for “The Wake” which was based on the John Caselberg poem he write to O Reilly saying
“The Wake” (panel one) ink and oil on unstretched canvas on sixteen panels, 1956
“I don’t understand the poem with any thoroughness at all either before I started work on it or when I finished. The feelings of what was being expressed comes over strongly – all builds into one feeling & builds this very largely by piling up of word on word in just such a relentless fashion”. Then in reference to the opening line of the poem,
“Your going maims God: God”
He writes “It is a line where bitterness is so strong that all the other feelings seem cancelled & is I feel foreign to the quality of a wake.”
But just a few lines later he writes “I think I’m wrong in what I say of the first line. I can’t work out what I do feel about it…No doubt this bitterness is right as a start.”
The book is a masterpiece of academic scholarship and shows a daunting level of hard work with Simpson transcribing the letters as well as researching and writing 1500 explanatory notes to make the contents of the letters fully accessible to contemporary readers.
O’Reilly’s son Matthew O’Reilly and McCahon’s grandson Finn McCahon-Jones contribute insightful essays that round out the unique perspective the letters afford.
Goethe once noted that “Ein alter Mann ist stets ein König Lear” – an old man is a King Lear, meaning that the problems which Lear faced were the same for all old men.
Lear’s problems were not necessarily of his own making as events and people conspired to take advantage of him and he found himself virtually alone, deprived of home, authority and family.
This gradual loss of place in society is central to a new play “Not King Lear” which is directed by Adrain Jackson who has worked for many years Royal Shakespeare Company and with people experiencing street homelessness in London
In this latest play he has created a playful yet serious retelling of the story of an old man in conflict with his children, who gives away his authority and falls into homelessness and mental ill-health.
“Not King Lear” has had input from and is performed by members of the Hobson Street Theatre Company which works in partnership with the Auckland City Mission, with an aim to tell stories that are based on real life experiences, addressing social issues.
There is level of sophistication to the play that is rewarding both in terms of the ideas it explores about relationships and homelessness but also in its approach to theatre.
In making use of Shakespeare’s original text, they are able to background some of the issues with a few passages from the play and some brief character and plot outlines. They present most of the Act I dialogue of the speeches of the three sisters which includes the powerful speech by Lear.
The cast also use this as an opportunity for jokes about the characters with Regan being referred to as Vegan and Cordelia as Corduroy. There are other parts of the play which are dealt with in a light hearted and ironic way while others are eloquent and insightful.
The players are uneven in their acting skills but there is a passion and honesty to all the performances which make for a rewarding theatrical experience. Some of the actors are brilliant with the one playing Lear providing a profound and expressive interpretation of the character.
The play has elements of Shakespeare’s approach to drama with the idea of the play within play as we see in Hamlet or Midsummers Nights Dream while another sequence features is a Men’s Group which touches on the issue of estrangement.
The audience participation is at a very different level. Early on the audience was asked to take out their cell phones, divided up into groups who then have to find things on their phones which will get used later in the show. So people had to search for Branch, Climate change, Storm and Trumpet. These then became the source of sounds which audience could then contribute to the soundscape. So when the King first appears the Trumpets let their trumpets blast away.
There is some very effective staging as in the final sequences where projected images of the mean streets of Auckland are used as a counterpoint to Lear’s blasted heath and the filmed images of the homeless pushing shopping trolleys is replicated with a shopping trolley being moved around the stage.
The inclusion of this work by the Hobson Street Theatre Company alongside international productions in the Auckland Arts Festival is to be commended and shows that New Zealand theatre has a crucial role to play in addressing social and personal issues as well as reaching new audiences.
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