Photo: Supplied
In episode four of Best of the Fest, Culture 101 co-hosts Perlina Lau and Mark Amery find Aotearoa in full festival swing.
While WOMAD and Homegrown come to Taranaki and Pōneke respectively this weekend, Nelson and Dunedin Fringe Festivals have just opened with ridiculously fulsome feasts. Our critics have been taking in shows at Aotearoa New Zealand Festival and Auckland Arts Festival.
Perlina is joined by Romy Hooper and Nathan Joe, while Mark is joined by Jo Randerson, Bryan Crump and Emily Perkins.
Belle Photo: Andi Crown
Belle is the brand new work of Malia Johnston and company’s Movement of the Human. An aerial and dance performance with an all-female cast it’s on at the St James Theatre until Sunday evening 17 March.
Arooj Aftab plays WOMAD Friday and Saturday night 15-16 March.
Critically acclaimed Irish theatre-maker Dan Colley’s Lost Lear is on in Pōneke until Sunday evening 17 March, before Colley presents A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings at Auckland Arts festival 21-24 March
The King's Singers Photo: supplied
Two other artists who are heading not just to Tāmaki Makaurau but Ōtautahi Christchurch after gigs in Poneke are also reviewed this week.
An Unfunny Evening with Tim Minchin is in Auckland 20-22 March and in Ōtautahi 24-25 March, while The King’s Singers performed in Tāmaki last night, before heading down south Friday night 15 March.
The Auckland Arts Festival continues and this week and joining Perlina Lau are actor, director and intimacy coordinator Romy Hooper and playwright and dramaturg, Nathan Joe.
Hooper and Lau discuss the German production Bernie Dieter’s Kabarett at the Spiegeltent in Aotea Square. Hooper attended the opening night of the show which was delayed, following freight issues with the delivery of the tent, but opened to a raucous and ready audience.
The punk-jazz-filled 100-minute show, with influences from 1920s underground club culture and daring circus acts, will be showing until 24 March at the Spiegeltent in the centre of Aotea Square.
Bernie Dieter's Club Kabarett Opening Night Sydney at First Fleet Park, The Rocks - thursday 17th February, 2022 Photo: Belinda Rolland Photography
Collectively, they discuss the Australiasian premiere of the Northern Irish theatre show, In the Name of the Son - The Gerry Conlon Story at Q Theatre. The fast-paced, autobiographical one-man show, with at least 30 characters, is based on the life of Gerry Conlon who was wrongly convicted of being an IRA bomber. He spent 15 years in prison before being released. A Hollywood film In the Name of the Father was made about the wrongful conviction, with Conlon played by Daniel Day Lewis.
The theatre show focuses more on the aftermath of prison and the fallout from unresolved trauma, familial guilt, the torture and treatment while in prison which led to a period of alcohol and drugs for Conlon, before he died aged 60 from cancer.
In the Name of the Son: The Gerry Conlon Story will be at Q Theatre’s Rangatira until 17 March.
You’ll find Best of the Fest episodes on our Culture 101 webpage, or search Culture 101 wherever you get your podcasts.
