Reviews

The Master (Carly Sheppard) has been chosen to save the Universe including Earth from destruction through the production of an artwork. At first, The Master revels in the task, but the reality of the pressure leads to an artist’s block and attempts to produce the needed work consumes the rest of the play. Carly Sheppard takes this surreal proposition and wrestles it into an engaging, humorous, and challenging event.

Under the direction of Anthony Brown and Ann Attwood, this production eloquently captures the fragile beauty and melancholy of memory, breathing life into the tale that first touched Attwood during her high school years in the 1970s.

Set against the backdrop of 1940s St. Louis, the play unfolds within the modest apartment of the Wingfield family.

Melody Rachel has a story to tell, she is same-sex attracted and that is inconsistent with her fundamental evangelical Christian upbringing.

So she left New Zealand, left the church and started dating women. But in time, that left a God-shaped hole in her life.

In that hole however she continues to talk to God and comes to a number of important realisations including that God talks back, that being lesbian is not a sin, that using people is a sin, that sorrow is not the same as despair and that it wouldn’t be called faith if we were all certain. 

How to Art is a much-needed mockery of high art performed by three virtuosic physical theatre performers. The show is a playful satire inspired by the inconceivable BS surrounding Maurizio Cattelan’s artwork ‘Comedian’, in which he duct taped a banana to a wall and called it art. It sold to a cryptocurrency tech jock for $US6.2 million in 2024. Personally, I get so damn delighted to see fringe artists responding to real life events like this. This Maurizio Cattelan debacle was so grotesque, I am stoked that these New Zealand performers chose to push against it.