National Theatre review by Trevor Plumbly
The Christmas Special It’s the variety show and the gang’s all here: songsters, illusionists and comedians. We’ve got a political theme this year and it’s pretty high octane stuff for a small country. Donald and Boris may well have hoofed it in the world arena, but as the bard said ‘All the world’s a stage’, and remote as we are, we can still turn on a show. We don’t do clash of the Titans anymore, we use a casting system called MMP, a lot more suited to sub plots and insider trading…. Read More
After the gold rush by Trevor Plumbly
‘Helpless, helpless’ (Neil Young) Neil was scarcely boy-next-door material; he looked like someone had abandoned him in a doorway: overlong hair and a face that charity would describe as ‘lived in’. But the guy could write! He was the high priest of the folk/druggie followers (see ‘The needle and the damage done’). Vocally he wasn’t much, but then neither were the others; the message was more important than the melody. They were heady times with newly discovered drugs, rights, sexual freedom and social wrongs to identify with, from racial discrimination to nuclear… Read More
There’s no business…by Trevor Plumbly
Showbiz! Pre-Internet, politics was generally left to trade unions and the privileged. Personally, I’ve always voted labour in the hope that someday the goodies of life might be shared around evenly, but age and cynicism reduced that to theatrical fantasy. All the world may well be a stage, but reality doesn’t sell tickets like razzle-dazzle. Down here in NZ, we mightn’t do the flashy Broadway stuff, but we can tap dance with the best of them when it comes to ‘who-done it?’ or, for those currently in power, ‘who should have done… Read More
New Zealand on the map by Angela Caldin
There was a time when quite a lot of people were vague about where exactly New Zealand was. Somewhere down at the bottom of the world was a good guess; fairly near Australia perhaps. Sometimes maps of the world left New Zealand off altogether, as though its two islands just a bit bigger than the UK were too insignificant to bother about. Containing the virus But in the last few months New Zealand’s stock has risen dramatically, because under the leadership of prime minister Jacinda Ardern, Covid-19 has to all intents and… Read More
verbalberbal 