Your Body is a Battleground (2014)

December 14, 2014 at 7:44 am | Posted in Dance Review, Play Review, Show Review | Leave a comment
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I went to John Butterfield’s Your Body is a Battleground and it was challenging. A mixture of dance and drama putting ‘the question’ to audience: though showing a series of physical encounters – couples, men, women, and singles.

This is not a pure contemporary dance work, and it is not a play (there is a dialog), but a mixture of both. Most of the performers were mainly dancers:

  • Amelia McCarthy,
  • Eliza Sanders,
  • Felix Sampson,
  • Mark Semple,
  • Jacob Edmonds,
  • Laura Beanland-Stephens,
  • Roymata Holmes, and
  • Susie Berry.

This work, works well, partly because the anti-room where the audience waited had posters, and a projection wall, creating the context for the work. This made contemporary dance very accessible.
I wish them every luck in making the Fringe Festival.

Dead Tragic (2014)

December 14, 2014 at 7:08 am | Posted in Musical Review, Show Review | 1 Comment
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Last weekend, it was Michael Nicholas Williams’s Mama Mia, this weekend it was his Dead Tragic – which I saw at Bats Theatre 20 years ago.

The original cast:

  • Emma Kinane,
  • Jo Pheloung,
  • Lyndee-Jane Rutherford,
  • Michael Nicholas Williams, and
  • Darren Young.

updated some of the material, cast off the years and wow-ed the audience.

Mysteriously, the Bee Gees number was cancelled – copyright (?), after all, with a name like Dead Tragic, surely Tragedy, when the feelings gone, … would have been perfect. Still the updated choreography, included ‘selfies’ in hilarious rendition of “I did what I did for Maria” – very generation X.

It was really funny – “putting the fun back into funeral” – and very entertaining – even the Circa Theatre ushers were bopping to the music during the interval :-). The tradition version of how Billy[the] Hero [despite orders from his fiance] is challenged! Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town gets an update – what does happen if Ruby’s dis-abled husband doesn’t die, but lives for 20 years; well she waxes! The Leader of the pack was actually as lady biker!

Go see this, you laugh and be transported back to a simpler music period.

Mama Mia! (Wellington 2014)

December 6, 2014 at 10:56 pm | Posted in Concert Review, Dance Review, Event Review, Show Review | 1 Comment
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After I saw the Mama Mia movie in 2008, I resolved to see the stage show. Well last night, I finally made it: Wellington Musical Theatre put on a production.

I won’t go into the story of Mama Mia – because some much is available on the web about it.

It was fun; it was fantastic; much more satisfying that the movie (which was pretty entertaining). The movie had great locations and a cinematic sharpness; but, the stage show (any stage show) has actual presence – the performers are there with you and when they do a great job you get carried away in a way that is different to a movie.

So, instead of

  • Amanda SiegFried, we had Ellie-Jane Neal;
  • Meryl Streep: Julie O’Brien;
  • Julie Walters: Jody McCartney;
  • Christine Baranski: Frances Leota;
  • Pierce Brosnan: Russell Dixon
  • Stellan Skarsgård: Mark Shepherd; and
  • Colin Firth: David Cox.

There was a nice juxtaposition of Sophie and her three two friends (Ali – Brogan Wilkinson, Lisa – Flora Lloyd) and beside Donna, Rosie, and Tanya. Jody McCartney absolutely nailed the “Take a Chance on Me” number.

The Scripted encore – with Donna, Rosie, and Tanya in 80’s lycria was fantastic: like being at a mini ABBA concert. The cast had most of the audience at the St James Theatre on their feet and dancing.

The on-stage and off-stage cast members (who are too numerous to list here) did a fantastic job.The dancing was technically good and very enthusiastic (Whitireia Performance Centre and New Zealand School of Dance are turning out great dancers); the singing was wonderful; and the invisible band did a great job.

I would tell you to go ad see this production, but I went to closing night – full marks to the cast for delivering right to the end.

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