Theatre | Courier-Mail (The)
1 July 2006
Peninsula, the latest play from NZ writer Gary Henderson, is applauded in Brisbane’s Courier Mail. Commissioned by the Christchurch Arts Festival, the play was inspired by Henderson’s own experience growing up in Duvauchelle Bay,…
Theatre | Guardian (The)
29 October 2005
October saw the UK premiere of hit NZ play, Serial Killers. Written by former Shortland Street scriptwriter, James Griffin, Serial Killers is a black comedy which takes place behind the scenes of…
Theatre | Channel 4
1 October 2005
New Zealand comedians Matt Heath and Chris Stapp, of Back of the Y and Bogan’s Heroes fame, have taken their special brand of gross-out humour to London, as contributing stuntmen on Channel 4’s …
Theatre | Stuff.co.nz
29 August 2005
A new Walt Disney stage production of Beauty and the Beast has proved a double coup for NZ. Weta Workshop is to design costumes for the $1 million extravaganza, which will be presented by…
Theatre | Sydney Morning Herald (The)
14 October 2004
Turanga Merito has officially assumed the lead in Sydney’s The Lion King, taking over from close friend and fellow Kiwi, Vincent Harder. The 20-year-old from Rotorua studied for a Bachelor of Performing Arts at…
Theatre | New Zealand Herald
14 August 2004
20-year-old Turanga Merito has assumed the lead role of Simba in the Sydney production of The Lion King, after fellow Kiwi Vincent Harder bowed out for family reasons. The Disney blockbuster draws a minimum…
Theatre | Guardian (The)
10 August 2004
“New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk parody act,” Flight of the Conchords (a.k.a Bret McKenzie and Jermaine Clement), made a triumphant return to this year’s Edinburgh Festival, with a new show entitled ‘Lonely Knights.’…
Theatre | Sydney Morning Herald (The)
17 April 2004
14-year-old Wellington performer Letitia Forbes has a starring role in the latest production by Cirque de Soleil – Quidam. An accomplished singer and actress, Forbes plays the central character of Zoe. The show is…
Theatre | Sydney Morning Herald (The)
7 November 2003
Alone It Stands, John Breen’s play about the infamous 1978 All Black loss to Irish club Munster, ran at Sydney’s Opera House Drama Theatre during the Rugby World Cup – not on match nights,…
Theatre | UpOverDownUnder
13 October 2003
Waikato University film graduate, Hadyn Butler, won both the best film and audience award at the annual UpOverDownUnder Antipodean Festival in London this year. His entry – Fresh – looks at the quintessential OE…
Theatre | Age (The) | Guardian (The)
1 August 2003
Kiwi comedy act, Flight of the Conchords, was dubbed the “unlikely hit” of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival by the Guardian, and narrowly missed out on the event’s prestigious top award. The satirical folk…
Theatre | News24.com
28 July 2003
First we were treated to the infinite variety of feminine experience in The Vagina Monologues; now actress and playwright Geraldine Brophy has penned the masculine equivalent. She describes The Viagara Monologues – which opened…
Theatre | Sydney Morning Herald (The)
4 July 2003
The trio behind Kiwi comedy act The Four Noels – James Pratt, John Forman, and Jesse Griffin – interviewed in SMH. The group formed in 1996, without any strictly comic ambitions. “We just wanted…
Theatre | Sydney Morning Herald (The)
16 June 2003
NZ performers feature strongly in Sydney’s highly anticipated production of The Lion King. Vincent Harde plays the lead role of Simba, with Water Rats star Jay Laga’aia as his on-stage father, Mufasa. The Disney…
Theatre | Age (The)
12 June 2003
Welsh-Wellingtonian actor, Ray Henwood, thrilled Melbourne audiences with his portrayal of theatre legend Richard Burton, in Mark Jenkins’ Playing Burton. The Age: “Henwood’s fine performance, beautifully paced, movingly builds real tragic stature for his…
Theatre | Times (The)
11 June 2003
Rocky Horror man, Richard O’Brien, interviewed about life and love in the Times. The weekly column – ‘Love etc’ – invites celebrities to divulge how different relationships have shaped their lives. A typically candid…
Theatre | Guardian (The)
7 June 2003
The latest play by renowned British actor and writer Lennie James – The Sons of Charlie Paora – features a group of NZ actors telling a quintessentially NZ story. Charlie Paora explores the lives…
Theatre | Age (The) | Sydney Morning Herald (The)
23 May 2003
SMH: “Black Grace, New Zealand’s all-male company of Maori and Pacific Island dancers, is the most engaging and entertaining company to visit Sydney for years. Maybe since the last time they were here…
Theatre | Cincinnati Post
12 May 2003
NZer Malcolm Burn was the guest choreographer for Ballet Tech Ohio’s production of Frederic Franklin’s Coppelia. Currently associate artistic director of the Richmond Ballet, Burns’ 25-year career includes stints as a principal dancer for…
Theatre | Victoria Times
9 May 2003
NZ ballet export Bebe Eversfield profiled in the Victoria Times. Now 78, Eversfield won a government scholarship to study at London’s prestigious Sadler’s Wells Company (now the Royal Ballet) and made her Albert Hall…
Theatre | Sydney Morning Herald (The)
2 May 2003
Kiwi comedian Tarun Mohanbhai has taken his acclaimed one-man show – D’Arranged Marriage – across the Tasman, with high-profile stints at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Sydney Opera House. Mohanbhai made his name…
Theatre | Age (The)
19 April 2003
Kiwi act Flight of the Conchords was voted Best Newcomer at the 17th Annual Melbourne International Comedy Festival, following on from similar accolades at Edinburgh last year. The two-man performance – made up of…
Theatre | The Wooster Group
17 April 2003
NZ Drama School student James Ashcroft has secured an internship at New York’s prestigious theatre and film company, The Wooster Group. The Wooster Group was founded by actor Willem Dafoe in the late…
Theatre | Boston Globe
16 February 2003
NZ-born Alexander Grant is in the director’s chair at Boston Ballet’s Grand Studio, where a performance of Ashton’s Fille is currently under production. The 77-year-old, widely regarded as “one of the great character…
Theatre | Scotsman (The)
4 February 2003
Dame Judith Mayhew has been elected chairperson of Scotland’s Royal Opera House, the first time the position has been held by a woman. The NZ-born high-flyer previously helmed the Corporation of London, and remains…
Theatre | Australian (The)
30 November 2002
Wellington-born Kristian Fredrikson, Australia’s leading set and costume designer, interviewed in Weekend Australian. A designer “whose name is synonymous with opulence,” Fredrikson is currently taking his third crack at creating “the perfect Swan Lake.”…
Theatre | Sydney Morning Herald (The)
28 November 2002
NZ’s 2002 Actor of the Year, Ray Henwood, has taken his award-winning portrayal of Richard Burton Sydney-side. In Playing Burton the Welsh-born actor brings to life his hell-raising compatriot with uncanny ability. Opening night…
Theatre | Star Bulletin
8 November 2002
Don C. Selwyn’s The Maori Merchant of Venice won the Audience Award for Best Feature at the 22nd Annual Hawai’i International Film Festival’s Golden Maile Awards. The Maori film adaptation of Shakespeare’s…
Theatre | Sydney Morning Herald (The)
29 July 2002
Irish playwright John Breen’s tale of Munster’s famous victory over the 1978 grand-slam All Blacks recieves winning reviews and box office at the Sydney Opera House on its way to a season in Auckland’s…
Obituaries | Independent (The)
9 July 2002
NZ performance artist Alan Brunton (57) died while touring Europe with his Red Mole theatre troupe, ” NZ letters of its one truly iconic radical figure.” Coming to prominence in the late 70s as…
Theatre | Chicago Improv Festival
1 April 2002
NZ’s Improv Bandits are NZ’s latest world champions having won the Super Cage Match Championship at the Chicago Improv Festival in the USA. Beating off “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” wannabes from across…
Theatre | Guardian (The)
18 March 2002
“Highly talented” 19-year-old Anna Paquin combines “prim formality of speech with an argumentative sexual ardour” as she stars alongside Hayden Christensen and Jake Gyllenhaal in the London staging of This is Our…
Theatre
16 February 2002
NZEdged comedian Deb Filler rises to a theatrical challenge in her one-woman show in Baltimore: “Glistening and piping hot, the bread has a rich, yeasty taste. But in the end, what Filler has to…
Theatre | Age (The)
6 February 2002
Applauded young Aotearoa actress Madeleine Sami, dodges questions about her involvement with Rings star Elijah Woods (“we kind of hung out and went to the movies a bit”), a day after Woods confesses he’s…
Theatre | Times of India
5 February 2002
Warrior Princess Lucy Lawless learns “new respect for the vagina, for the power and sacredness of it”, as she stars alongside Madeline Sami and Danielle Cormack in Auckland Theatre Company’s staging of the feminist…
Theatre | Ananova
17 January 2002
24-year-old Aucklander, Miles Lattimer-Gregory, hits the big time in London’s West End, with the company he founded, the British Touring Shakespeare Company opening its season of Hamlet and the Twelfth Night at the Westminster…
Theatre | BBC News
4 December 2001
The Merchant of Venice is turned into the first Maori-language film of a Shakespeare play. “Shakespeare’s use of language is not dissimilar to the ancient poetic, lyrical and metaphorical Maori style,” explains Scott Morrison,…
Theatre | Time Magazine
26 November 2001
The praise has not ceased for No.2, New Zealand playwright Toa Fraser’s play, currently touring the world. “The play has been a triumph wherever it has shown, jumping cultural barriers with its universal themes”,…
Theatre | New York Times (The)
16 November 2001
Anna Paquin has blossomed from child prodigy to multi-talented star. She is receiving rave reviews for her role in the Broadway play ‘The Glory of the Living’, directed by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. “This is…
Theatre | Observer (The) | Scotsman (The)
19 July 2001
Picked by Observer critics as an Edinburgh Best of Festival 2 and winner of a prestigious Fringe First, Toa Fraser’s No. 2 continues to thrive and garner praise despite a bit of reality-biting about…
Theatre | Belfast Telegraph
5 July 2001
New Zealand student Geoff Pinfield gains a first class degree and the inaugural Simon Callow prize for Theatre Criticism at Queen’s University, Belfast.
Theatre | Gazette (The)
18 June 2001
Miss Wonder drags herself out to promote New Zealand comedy group the Improv Bandits at the Montreal Fringe Festival.
Theatre | New York Times (The)
9 June 2001
Yale University based NZ playwright Julie Mckee’s one-act play about death and two maidens, Invitation to a Funeral, well reviewed in NYT: “a wonderfully wry trip to the funeral parlor” about two women…
Theatre | News24.com
8 June 2001
Hold the show, my wife’s having a baby cried Jeff Knight of Christchurch’s Court Theatre.
Theatre | Age (The)
11 April 2001
Kiwi comedy queen Cal Wilson on frocks and laughter in the Melbourne Comedy Festival.
Theatre | Age (The)
10 April 2001
Kiwi comic Cal Wilson brings home the laughs: “God’s Little Poppet verges on brilliance, as does Krystalle the exotic dancer. Krystalle is close to a work of art; a lap dancer who forces her…
Theatre | Age (The)
10 April 2001
Secret Asian Raybon Kan infiltrates the Melbourne comedy scene with a “sharp, contemporary and observant” show.
Theatre | Ananova
10 April 2001
New Zealand playwright Toa Fraser’s Bare tours Sourthern England. Madeleine Sami reprises her award winning role.
Theatre | Sydney Morning Herald (The)
15 January 2001
1975 New Zealand play Mothers and Fathers gets a convincing makeover for Sydney’s Fringe – “even though it’s slightly archaic to think that $50,000 could buy you a dream home in this town”.
Theatre | Sydney Morning Herald (The)
6 December 2000
Based on iconic Dennis Glover poem ‘The Magpies’, Gary Henderson’s Skin Tight is a play with “spare beauty and competitive power”.
Te Ao Maori | Ananova
23 November 2000
Te Tangata Whai Rawa O Weneti, (usually known as The Merchant of Venice), currently filming in New Zealand will “introduce the Maori language to the world,” as well as making Shakespeare more accessible to…
Theatre | London Theatre Guide
8 November 2000
New Zealander Richard O’Brien’s as-yet unnamed Rocky Horror Picture Show #2 will premier on the London stage in 2001.
Te Ao Maori | Irish Times (The)
2 November 2000
Rangimoana Taylor and a Ngati Ranana group are among the storytellers to be powhiried onto a marae recreated by Dublin school pupils for the ninth (festival of story-tellers), highlighting New Zealand and immigration.
Theatre | Sydney Morning Herald (The)
22 October 2000
Toa Fraser’s first play, Bare, hits Sydney with “a saltiness that is unmistakably NZ”. Fraser is compared to Raymond Carver and Tom Wolfe, masters of edge and bite.
Theatre | Ottawa Citizen (The)
28 September 2000
Purapurawhetu, Briar Grace-Smith’s 1997 award-winning play, has completed a successful tour of Canada and is now on its way to Delphi in Greece. This has been a mega year for Grace-Smith, who received an…
Theatre | Off Off Off
29 August 2000
New Zealand actress Giarna Te Kanawa in New York plays all five parts in “Verbatim” by William Brandt and Miranda Harcourt, which played in the New York Fringe Festival. “Verbatim” is based on interviews…