SCENE BY JAMES: 2023 – A Theatrical Year in Review [Part 2: The Shows]

This 12 months’s commentary is cut up into two elements. CLICK HERE for 2023 – A Theatrical Year in Review [Part 1 – The Issues].

Theatre Scenes’ current annual Year in Reviews have focussed on massive sector points, broadening our focus past the theatre carried out on our phases. But it’s all the time a reduction to show the eye again to the reveals, and revisit what our crew of reviewers fabricated from them. 

So, let’s get again to enterprise.

Well, not fairly but. Silo Theatre made the large name that “2023 = cancelled”, that means we missed out on Silo’s ordinary agenda-setting productions this 12 months. The firm as a substitute developed work internally, sneaking in a stay stay cinema manufacturing of Night of the Living Dead as their one and solely public present of the 12 months. Erin O’Flaherty discovered it to be “a fun and innovative concept that unites the mediums of cinema and theatre; it playfully exists in both and neither. It is full of delicious contradictions – like the zombies themselves, caught between life and death.”

Another manufacturing enjoying between these artforms was The Picture of Dorian Gray, direct from Sydney Theatre Company and introduced by Auckland Arts Festival. While the manufacturing had many within the arts group buzzing, our reviewer Tim George wasn’t so offered:

I felt like there was not sufficient left for the viewers’s personal creativeness. There is a lot use of screens, and photographs of characters performing in different environments, that it begins to really feel overwrought, and begins to impede the influence of [Eryn Jean] Norvill’s efficiency.

Auckland Pride
Theatres Scenes joined The Pantograph Punch, Bad Apple Gay, and Rat World for the Auckland Pride Review Project, aiming to offer extra essential discourse round queer theatre and efficiency work. Our reviewers lined a rainbow of reveals hosted by Auckland Pride: Show Ponies, Naked & Dangerous, Concerning the UFO Sighting Outside Mt Roskill, Auckland, Festival of Live Art, F.O.L.A, The Best is Yet to Come: A Queer Magic Show, Jez & Jace: Lads on Tour, Man Lessons, Access and She’s Crowning: Rebirth.

Auckland Theatre Company
King Lear was the centrepiece of Auckland Theatre Company’s programme, ATC’s first Shakespeare manufacturing over a decade. Many had lengthy anticipated the prospect of Michael Hurst being able to play the ageing King. Unfortunately, flawed staging decisions contributed to the manufacturing lacking the total energy of the play. Following earlier Covid cancellations, each Witi’s Wāhine by Nancy Brunning and Things that Matter by Gary Henderson lastly made it to the ATC stage. Things that Matter’s “sobering account of the alarming state of our healthcare system” taking up new urgency in an election 12 months. 

Ankita Singh’s debut play, Basmati Bitch, was probably the most thrilling nights I had on the theatre this 12 months. Erin O’Flahery described it as “a visually spectacular, fast-paced firecracker of a show. Think Blade Runner meets Scott Pilgrim… It is rare that we get to see locally-produced work of this ambition and aesthetic flare on our stages…  I laughed and I yelled, and my heart soared. Blazingly modern and joyously thrilling, you will be sorry to miss it.”

Wellington Ballroom
Another standout for me this 12 months was Arawhata, by Wellington Ballroom, which performed in Wellington, Auckland and Hawkes Bay. Following within the footsteps of queer forebears, it was a smashingly assured debut centering the tales of takatāpui and trans indigenous individuals of color. 

Hamilton
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton arrived at Spark Arena, the first-ever Arena model of the blockbuster musical. Unfortunately sound and sight-line points considerably marred the expertise, with a reliance on the large screens bookending the stage. You may need been higher off staying residence and watching the Disney Plus model, if not for the standout New Zealand performers within the Australasian solid, Akina Edmonds and Matu Ngaropo. Ngaropo’s incorporation of Māoritanga into his efficiency of George Washington (together with hongi and haka) stopped the present on closing evening, the viewers erupting with proud applause. 

Theatre for Legal Change
Two completely different New Zealand productions of Prima Facie by Australian playwright Suzie Miller performed in Auckland and Wellington on the identical time this 12 months. A transparent-eyed cross-examination of the failings in how the authorized system offers with sexual assault circumstances, Prima Facie is a play that has been altering authorized follow: Northern Ireland Judges are required to observe the play earlier than taking the bench. Law professionals attending the Wellington season (starring Mel Dodge) and post-show Q&A may declare two persevering with skilled improvement factors. As the manufacturing’ director Lyndee-Jane Rutherford famous within the programme, “artists… who often struggle to make a living wage, will be educating our lawmakers and those who uphold the law.”

Sharu Delilkan and Tim Booth reviewed the Auckland season season (starring Acushla-Tara Kupe): 

Miller’s intense and insightful script is an actor’s dream and Kupe devours each phrase and delivers them with nice aplomb. She grabs the viewers’s consideration from the primary second and doesn’t let go, whereas some well-timed comedic moments present a a lot wanted reprieve from the weighty subject material….After the present you permit with the sensation that it’s us, the viewers, which were cross-examined within the witness field. We left feeling exhausted however educated and enriched. Prima Facie is uncooked, with harrowing moments the place “No means no” seems to be ‘open to interpretation’ or at occasions simply merely dismissed, and asks whether or not the legislation because it stands can truly present justice in its present guise. 

New Work
There was an abundance of latest work from quite a few our established theatre corporations: Moe Miti by Katrina George from Red Leap Theatre, Dirty Work by Justin Lewis and Jacob Rajan from Indian Ink Theatre Company, I Want to Be Happy by Carl Bland from Nightsong, Heart Go…Boom! from Massive, and Not Woman Enough by Hweiling Ow and How to Throw a Chinese Funeral by Jill Kwan from Proudly Asian Theatre. The latter play had Sharu Delilkan and Tim Booth rejoicing “Alamak!”: 

It’s such a deal with to listen to genuine Manglish at The Basement Theatre. For the uninitiated, Manglish is the ‘rojak’ (fruit salad) mixture of English-Malay-Cantonese-Hokkien-Hindi-Tamil phrases that usually pepper on a regular basis Malaysian conversations.  And How to Throw a Chinese Funeral’s dialogue epitomises this Malaysian vernacular all the way down to its core.  The play captures a well-recognized slice of Malaysian life that includes excessive caricatures of the disapproving martyr-like father or mother and auntie who’re juxtaposed towards their Western-wannabe offspring.

Eleanor Bishop and Karin McCracken invited us to verify into Heartbreak Hotel. Hannah Jamieson suggested us to “prepare to laugh, cry, and be thoroughly entertained at the Heartbreak Hotel; its music-comedy concoction is the perfect remedy for a broken heart.”

Nathan Joe had a brand new play – type of. First developed in 2013, Joe’s Groundhog Day impressed play Losing Face lastly made its debut, following Joe’s triumphant Scenes From a Yellow Peril final 12 months. Irene Corbett wrote: “Losing Face grapples with the everything bagel that is the human heart and succeeds. It is very Christmassy, very gay, and very much about family – equal parts joyous, frightening, loving, and exposing. Losing Face is a great New Zealand play.”

Punctum Productions adopted up Losing Face with Chick Habit by Nuanzhi Zheng at Basement Theatre. Jess Karamjeet discovered Chick Habit was “an uplifting show about queer, Asian women in a punk band – and that alone in our current climate is pretty revolutionary. What more could Tāmaki Makaurau ask for right now?”

Other reveals at Basement Theatre included Penny Ashton’s Shakespeare parody The Tempestuous, Henchman, Club Waack, Chairs! and this 12 months’s Christmas present, Jingle Bellethon Telethon. 

One of essentially the most enterprising debuts of latest work got here from Barden Party’s Butterfly Smokescreen. I reported from Auckland’s Viaduct Harbour: 

The world’s solely immersive theatre expertise aboard a superyacht? That’s the daring declare made within the advertisements for Butterfly Smokescreen, and I don’t have any motive to doubt it. The notion of creatives getting the chance to make an immersive, murder-mystery theatre present happening on an precise multi-million-dollar yacht in Aotearoa looks like a pipe dream, and but, for the previous two months, viewers members dressed to the nines in Twenties trend have been turning as much as Auckland’s viaduct harbour for a really memorable efficiency expertise… But this was no joke for the patron, who was prepared to stump up some money. They secured the Sea Breeze III, which normally charters for $100K per week. Barely one month later, they have been opening the present.

The greatest shock? “The terrifyingly rapid turn-around from pitch to production has resulted in a remarkably cohesive experience.”

New Spaces
Some nice information: Mt Roskill’s Number Three Theatre, led by younger Pasfika theatremakers, secured a everlasting theatre on Dominion Road. “It means somebody’s a step closer to their dream, having this resource here” Lijah Mavaega advised 1News, “It could be someone just needs a space to dance, or have room to sing their lungs out, or get an idea out and put in on a piece of paper to share it.”

 “Nelson’s brand-new home of storytelling”, The Professional Theatre Company launched this 12 months, opening with the Shakespearean impressed Mr & Mrs Macbeth of Dodson Valley Road by Gregory Copper 

Te Pou Theatre opened its new whare at Corban Arts Estate in January. Our reviewers loved Te Pou’s reveals Ngā Reta, Limited Time Only, Concerning the UFO Sighting Outside Mt Roskill, Auckland. Te Pou was a becoming host for the return season of The Haka Party Incident by Katie Wolfe (which debuted with Auckland Theatre Company in 2021, a standout manufacturing that 12 months) because it ready to embark on its first nationwide tour.

Anuja Mitra, who reviewed the 2021 manufacturing, and Morgan Dalton-Mill (Ngāti Whātua ki Kaipara) had a kōrero about what it meant to expertise the work at Te Pou’s Tokomanawa theatre:

A: When I first noticed the present, it was on the sprawling stage of the ASB Waterfront Theatre. You talked about that the theatre at Te Pou has the size of a wharenui. There was a common ambiance of welcoming everybody into that house, permitting them to decide on and settle into their seats earlier than the play started about 10 minutes after the scheduled begin time. How did the stage, and bodily house extra broadly, influence your expertise of the present? 

M: The Tokomanawa theatre has a excessive ceiling, with two ceiling panels that meet the place the pou tokomanawa in a wharenui can be, and an enormous quantity of naked flooring house. So moving into the house instantly made me really feel as if I used to be in a wharenui like these I’ve been to and stayed in. I assumed this was acceptable as a result of the wharenui is the place necessary kaupapa is mentioned, such because the kaupapa on the centre of this play.  

They additionally mentioned the play’s purposeful and highly effective use of kapa haka:

A: We can’t discuss in regards to the present with out speaking in regards to the kapa haka! The kaiako kapa haka/kaitito haka was Nīkau Balme, who composed one of many haka carried out. There was some nice comedy flowing from the engineering college students’ butchering of the haka, however the one on my thoughts is certainly the ultimate haka composed by Nīkau, He Taua. It was highly effective, too, to see some viewers members carry out a haka in response.

M: That haka was a standout. Seeing it crammed me with awe and delight. I’m no knowledgeable in kapa haka or te ao Māori broadly, however I assumed He Taua was a beautiful instance of a haka with kaha, ihi and wehi. It was at full quantity and the singing was out of this world. I loved watching the taiaha used appropriately throughout this haka in comparison with the opposite parody haka by the engineering college students. I used to be additionally thrilled to see Nī lead elements of this haka. It was a transferring strategy to end a transferring play — I used to be in tears for thus many causes afterwards.

Embarking on a nationwide tour following a tricky string of Covid cancellations over a number of years, The Haka Party Incident demonstrated once more this 12 months the ability of artwork to shine a light-weight on onerous conversations, a beacon selling understanding and connection between Māori and tauiwi throughout a very corrosive election marketing campaign. At the Wellington Theatre Awards in December, The Haka Party Incident was awarded Production of the Year.

Finally, an enormous thanks to Irene Corbett, who stepped up this 12 months as Auckland editor, organising, modifying and posting opinions. Irene has helped maintain Theatre Scenes going for one more 12 months (do you know we’ve been at this since 2010?!). A particular welcome to new reviewers Hannah Jamieson and Jackshen Lee, and thanks to everybody who contributed to Theatre Scenes this 12 months. We made it!

SEE ALSO:

Theatre Scenes Theatrical Year in Reviews: 2022; 2021; 2020; 2019 ; 2018 ; 2017 ; 2016 ; 2015 ; 2014 ; 2013 ; 2012 ; 2011 ; 2010