Pol’s style is a bundle of nervous and enthusiastic energy. He often moves his body in odd shapes across the stage, throwing in the occasional high kick or skip to keep us engaged. And it isn’t hard because he has packed so much into this one-hour show.

Instead of the usual observational comedy, he started by turning the microscope on himself: his name, his fashion sense, even his undiagnosed OCD. From there, it’s a whirlwind of musings, worries, hyper-specific pop culture references, and indirect political jabs.

He took us from butt botox, tea variations, and aggressive bird reviews to childhood memories, like cherished encyclopedias and nostalgic children’s songs. Then, just when you thought you’d settled into a groove, he pivoted to New Zealand’s archived material from Lyttelton Harbour village before catapulting us back to present-day TikTok obsessions. It was like being thrown into a blender of ideas, and somehow, it worked.

There wasn’t a single lull. Pol’s humour is sharp and intelligent without losing its sense of fun. His playful and at times manic approach kept the energy high and the audience on its toes. Whether he was questioning whether geese are aggressive or just struggling to let go of irrelevant information, or diving into the absurdity of everyday situations, his humour felt both clever and playful . It was a reminder that comedy doesn’t always need a point, sometimes it’s about being a silly goose.

Review by Nadia Freeman

The night kicked off with DJ Randy from Mai FM spinning classic Hutt bangers. Joe described the aim as building up garage party vibes, and DJ Randy nailed it. As the sold-out crowd trickled in, we were grooving in our seats to old-school party favourites like Digable Planets and 50 Cent. Joe even demanded that the crowd sing along to Flo Rida’s “Low” before he’d take the stage. A brilliant way to set the scene.

Joe Daymond himself is a charming and unassuming host. It’s no small feat for someone who has amassed millions of fans online and toured internationally with comedy legends. I had the privilege of seeing his show “I Hope I Made You Proud” last year, when he brought us through how surreal it was for him to be on the cusp of all his dreams coming true. We left with laughs in our bellies and hope in our hearts for all that lay ahead.

The opening crowd work got off to an awkward start. Was it an unusually introverted audience? Was it because it was straight after work on a Tuesday? Was it because a Wellington audience is never going to voluntarily shout their personal stories across a room without at least three drinks? Or was it Joe’s unusually chill demeanour? Whatever led to the slow start, the night did pick up the pace.

It was a packed lineup of local and some international talent. Highlights included Clarissa Chandrahasen, with fantastic timing and confidence; Martin Urbano, with his satirical role-playing and horrific one-liners; and the legend himself, Raybon Kan.

The lineup opened with Q Potts, who shared very relatable material on being of both Warrior (Māori and Cook Island) and coloniser (German and British) heritage. This was followed by newcomer and regular face at open mics in Wellington, Jenice Goveas. I must say, I’ve really enjoyed seeing her hone her comedy into what was a very impressive short set about the idiosyncrasies of being a new migrant in New Zealand and why a butter chicken tsunami might be exactly what the country needs.

Clarissa gave us insight into the sports lesbians get to choose when they come out of the closet and the correlation between academic achievement and lesbians. Leki Lyons, another Hutt comedian, delivered smart, punchy lines with layered context, deserving of a sharp audience.

The evening went up a notch when New York comedian Martin Urbano took the stage. He perfected the art of confusion and surprise, and with his 1950s radio voice, he threw the audience into a full ten minutes of one-liners that caught us off guard and could get a little dark, if not dirty.

Tama Alexander kept the laughs going with a polished set of well-timed physical comedy and self-deprecation.

All of this rounded off with a wonderful end to the night with Raybon Kan, a legend in the NZ comedy scene. Raybon did his first comedy festival in 1996 and brought a fresh take on the “in my day” jokes. This was followed by an explanation of how to prepare the New Zealand Olympic team for Beijing when you’ve never been there yourself.

You can still catch some of these fantastic comedians this week:

• Tama Alexander: You Wouldn’t Think – 6pm every night until Saturday 23 May 2026.
  https://www.comedyfestival.co.nz/find-a-show/tama-alexander-you-wouldnt-think/
• Jenice Goveas: Oops, Sari I’m Indian – 7pm, Friday 22 May 2026.
  https://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2026/oops-sari-im-indian2/wellington
• Mo Munn & Q Potts: Driving Me Crazy – 8pm until Saturday 23 May 2026. https://www.comedyfestival.co.nz/find-a-show/mo-munn-q-potts-driving-me-crazy/

Review by Nadia Freeman

Ginge and Minge’s REDEMPTION is a mission to save the discarded and rejected from the bottom of the bin and give them another shot.

These two have been tearing up stages across Aotearoa since 2020, and their chemistry is as strong as ever. Megan, fresh off a Master of Arts in Creative Writing, and Nina, a seasoned theatre producer and performer, bring the kind of energy that makes you wonder if they’re secretly powered by espresso and pure chaos.

The premise is genius. Every night, three brave artists are invited to the show to pitch a sketch or scene that’s failed in the past. Then Ginge and Minge rope in their cast of seasoned comedians and improv actors to rework these flops into something brilliant. The audience votes, and the winning sketches get their moment to shine, in other words redeemed. It’s like a comedy version of a second chance at love, but with more mayonnaise.

If you’ve seen Ginge and Minge before, you know what to expect. Wild, messy, and high-energy performances that demonstrate their sharp thinking and impressive connection as partners in comedy. Even though they weren’t doing the heavy lifting this time, this show still reflects the Ginge and Minge style of loud, emotional, and of course always much weirder than you’d expect.

The sketches I saw were a masterclass in absurdity. There were the human personified emotions. Think an adult, chaotic version of Inside Out that somehow led to sexual tension with a jar of mayonnaise. A tense drama explored the complications of romance when your new partner isn’t familiar with what a reflection is. And an incredible musical about a pacifist praying mantis with outstanding improvised songs that spanned four genres: funk, ballad, to hip-hop.

The lessons to be learned here are that love prevails, everything deserves a second change and improv is very silly.

Written by Nadia Freeman

For those who don’t know her, Samantha Hannah is a Billy T Award nominee who’s been turning life’s oddities into comedy for years. In 2018, she garnered a lot of attention with her show How to Find a Husband in a Year, a concept born from her real-life attempt to find a partner. By 2019, she had followed it up with How to Find Happiness (in a Year), a witty and self-aware exploration of reclaiming happiness after grief that earned her a spot in the top 10 for the Funny Women Best Show award. Now, seven months pregnant and balancing motherhood, work, and stand-up, she brings her latest show, Peekaboo!, to the NZ International Comedy Festival, and it’s a solid hit.

The premise for this show is that Samantha is reinventing herself as a touring children’s entertainer. In keeping with the theme, the stage is set like an interactive children’s TV programme. Her easygoing charm made it comfortable for us to join her on a chaotic interpretation of children’s entertainment for adults, complete with props, toys, and storytelling that never quite worked out as intended, even putting out a New Zealand icon to roast.

Samantha is exceptionally talented at comedic storytelling. She has a way of drawing you into the narrative with a real gift for crafting imagery that pulls you into the moment. For this reason, I would say she didn’t really need to supplement it with the photos to complement the storytelling, as we were already with her. However, I did very much enjoy the videos of her baby Charlie and clips from the home security system, which brought hilarity to the sweet and mundane of everyday life on maternity leave.

While the show centres on parenthood, it’s far from exclusive. Non-parents (like me) will still have a great time. Hannah has an impressive way of being relatable to anyone in her audience through raw honesty, with punchlines that deliver dark and outrageous twists.

Samantha Hannah’s Peekaboo! is well-crafted and engaging, weaving personal experiences into a broader commentary on parenthood, work, and identity without ever feeling heavy-handed. She tackled the chaos of balancing motherhood, a full-time job, and stand-up with humour that felt authentic and relatable.

Make sure you get your tickets! This is a show that you’ll be guaranteed to leave with a smile on your face.

Review by Nadia Freeman

Speed is Emotional
Written and performed by Jo Randerson

Speed is Emotional is exactly what it sounds like: fast, funny, a little chaotic, and completely its own thing.

Written and performed by Jo Randerson, the show dives headfirst into what it feels like to live with ADHD. Randerson invites anyone with a neurodivergent brain, and anyone who loves someone with one, to come along for the ride. The audience laughs their way through the strange, familiar, and sometimes exhausting quirks of an ADHD mind.

If you’ve seen work from Barbarian Productions before, the vibe will feel familiar: chaotic, absurd, playful, a little rough around the edges in the best possible way. The show jumps between stories, analogies, props, and visual gags that explain how an ADHD brain works.

One of the most relatable threads for me was the sense that the world around you is moving… painfully… slowly. The urge to talk faster, move faster, juggle ten things at once. That buzzing internal feeling of why is this taking so long? Randerson captures that pace perfectly. For people with ADHD, it feels like recognition. For everyone else, it’s a window into a completely different operating system.

The set deserves a special shout-out. A giant parachute rigged with pulleys rises and falls with Randerson’s movement, like the set itself is a character in the performance. Combined with visuals that pop up throughout the show, the whole thing feels like an “acid-trip PowerPoint”.

Another highlight is the onstage chemistry between Randerson and Elliot Vaughan, who is a strong contender for Best Supporting Role.  While running the sound cues, Elliot and Jo have continous back-and-forth throughout the performance delivering sharp, well-timed comedy that lifts the performance to another level.

The show is a joyful and affirming experience for neurodivergent audiences. Instead of focusing only on the challenges, it shines a light on the strengths, creativity, and resilience that come with living in a brain wired a little differently.

The final musical moment with the band is a big, celebratory finish.  I think this perhaps runs longer than it needs to. I loved how Jo invites the audience into karaoke at the end and I wonder if this invitation of audience participation could happen earlier with the band.

There’s also room for the show to grow. Much of the story sits within Randerson’s own experience, but there’s a hilarious moment where their sons pop their heads through the set to offer commentary on life with an ADHD parent. It’s a brilliant gag, and expanding that idea by bringing in the perspectives of people who orbit Randerson’s whirlwind brain could open the piece to dive beyond the self-narrative.

For those with sensory sensitivity, at times the show can get loud and intense. Sitting near an aisle or bringing earplugs could help if you need a breather.

Much like people who live with ADHD, Speed is Emotional doesn’t try to tidy things up too neatly. It’s messy, inventive, heartfelt and very funny. A show that feels like spending an hour inside someone else’s brain and discovering it’s a pretty great place to be.

The Royal New Zealand Ballet (co-produced with West Australian Ballet) kicks off its 2026 season with royal escapades turned stylish political horrors in a performance of Macbeth utterly trenchant for our times.

You know the themes of Macbeth; witches spur a desire in Macbeth, and his ambition (and that of his wife) leads him towards murder, and eventually his downfall, in pursuit of the throne.

Here, Macbeth (Branden Reiners) is a political prodigy, spurred on by his wife Lady Macbeth (Ana Gallardo Lobania) and three influencers/media personalities (the aforementioned witches – Kirby Selchow, Ruby Ryburn and Shaun James Kelly) to kill Duncan (Laurynas Vėjalis) and commit a variety of other murders to find his way to the top, before his reign of terror is finally ended by Macduff (Zacharie Dun).

For the most part, this modernisation (dramaturgy by Ruth Little) works excellently well, casting us back to early 2000s vibes of Wall Street elite (plus iPhones), glitterati, where actions don’t have consequences and life’s just one big party.

A prescient take, considering the times we find ourselves in.

The modernisation works to a point, changing twilight stabbings to out-in-the-open poisonings, an assassination at a bar, a formerly off-script suicide staged in a bath right in front of us; secrets made flesh for the viewing audience in a way they just aren’t in the original text, to its benefit.  Business as usual the day after the death of the head of a company? Sounds like a typical 2026 Thursday,

I would perhaps question the death of Macduff’s family – which is implied via fiery projection and seems at odds with what’s printed in the programme, though I do commend not actually showing it – the historical precedent stating as much.

Alice Topp’s utterly inspired choreography is a sight to behold. I know Macbeth very well, have seen more than enough playings, and it’s impressive how distinctly some of the key pieces of verse have been translated to the dance; what we know as ballet colliding slickly with modern dance and various other styles to create something entirely unique.

Lady Macbeth’s “Out, damned spot!” becomes a striking moment of utter despondence, held high on the upper level of the set, and culminates with her downing pills and pouring wine over her head as she settles into her bath to die. A pivotal effort from Gallardo Lobania, taking a role that’s traditionally incredibly hard to find within its ambition and its grief, and utterly flourishing within it.

The sizzling, spicy toxicity between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth is enough to melt our ice creams in the auditorium, every duet between the pair an active struggle for power, two people never quite in the same mind as they leap, hold and eventually crumble apart.

What’s more is that Macbeth and Banquo (Kihiro Kusukami) – his long-time friend, in the case I’m guessing main confidant – have about as many duets as M/LM, the pair initially seeming to dance as ambition of a lighter, less pressured sort before they slip away into toxicity too.

The ensemble, too, is given a lot to do; Macbeth and his fellow politicians fighting for control on a long table at the top of the show, as well as several group numbers that inspire thoughts of The Great Gatsby, and all are performed with the flair you’d expect, not a hair out of place during very technically complicated pieces.

The most impressive staging of a pivotal moment in the work comes with Banquo appearing as a ghost to Macbeth. There’s a variety of ways to portray ghosts on stage, but during a banquet; the long table at the back of the stage clothed in bright red, successful patrons celebrating their wins, Banquo drags himself forth from within the table itself, and he and Macbeth struggle for power in a dance that’s a visceral mirror to those previous, before Macbeth tumbles away, both he and his wife broken, at the end.

I’d also note Banquo’s death itself, staged in a lowered set, giving the vibes of an underground bar, which involves stage combat interwoven within the dance and an actively impressively-staged death as it concludes.

To leave out discussion of the show’s production design would feel utterly bereft. Both the set and lighting design (Jon Buswell) are a spectacle, the stage divided into an upper and lower level, the upper level rising up and down and then tipping at one point to create three distinct playing spaces, with nothing wasted. Industrial, several shades of metal, with bloodied/rusted remnants appearing in the final scene, it truly gives the experience of a cutthroat, unprotected industry.

The costumes (Alesia Jelbart), too, ere on the side of minimalist, all but three predominantly dressed in shades of black, white or grey, with the three influencers dressed in red and green visibly the centre of this tortured world, as much as others try to reach for it.

You can’t talk about this show without mentioning its score (Christopher Gordon, conducted by Hamish McKeith, performed by the NZSO), which wanders into the realm of rock opera at points, Macbeth’s struggle for power literally physically felt in the weight of the music; eerie and visceral string work that haunts the narrative, whilst darting around 40s big band and 70s soul for some of the group scenes.

Never have I wanted a RNZB score to be purchasable at home more than this one; what a treat.

A denouement to remember, Macbeth’s final moments involve him, broken, at the end of his rope, literally climbing up a sloped wall to be put out of his misery, blood slipping down the slope behind him as he falls, a rightful end that is as physically complex as it is incredible to watch. What a show.

Visually and performatively a spectacle, Macbeth lives up to the hype of its stunning production imagery, and sizzles with all the toxic spice you’d hope for. Run, don’t walk to this staging, on across the country now.

Creaking floorboards, howls in the night… just another Wellington storm or is there something spooky hiding in Paramount’s new venue, The Gods?

I’m not entirely sure since I can’t find the place… But a ghostly maze of paths and Fringe staff lead me to the auditorium eventually, where I manage my less than subtle entrance, in time before my favourite line:

“Wait, are we sure that’s a ghost and not a kid that walked in?”

The ghost or kid wasn’t me (or was it?) but a 13-year-old ghost and tiddlywinks fan, Victor (Moe Hawk) who died 136 years ago, and has been confined to this small attic since, yet longs for the real world and real company.

Lucky for Victor, he’s tracked down by tween friends Caleb (Xanthe Curtain) and Billy (Sophie Badrick), who call themselves the Ghost Bros, the name of their YouTube channel which seeks out the supernatural.

Our small audience is treated like their 15 YouTube subscribers as we join their search for ghosts, watch them entertain themselves, argue, and practice their secret handshake. They also try to contact the afterlife through an ineffective Ouija Board, and argue some more over the moral rights of filming their subjects, either dead or alive.

Both the funny and serious moments are emphasised through lighting and sound effects by Tech Operator Michael Trigg. The lighting and soundtrack are well utilised, and I wish there were more effects, since they highlight the catch phrases with effects nicely, and make those without effects seem a lot emptier when there’s so many tricks thrown in throughout the rest of the show.

These effects also help make the 50-minute show go quite fast. Devised by our three actors for the Curtain Call Company, this is the team that brought us Goths Against Classical Music in 2023 and Our Place in 2024.

This show about their friendship describes “the coolest thing that ever happened to us” and answers important questions (important to Victor) like, “do modern people not go to church?”

Caleb and Billy create a safe and fun environment for the audience to join their ghost hunt as if they are searching for treasure, because everything is exciting and meaningful as a young tween, and their excitement is contagious.

It’s lovely to see the acceptance of Victor as he embarks on his own journey (and handshake) to become “one of the bros”.

Whether you’re a bro, a ghost, alive or otherwise, this show is a fun reminder of what was once important to us as kids, and what’s important still. I swear on your afterlife, having the right bros and the right company always makes life better.

[Warning: This piece talks about disease, war and death.]

Matiu / Somes Island is the ever-present spectre looming in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara, one of three islands that the harbour cradles gently within its grasp, and I’ve been meaning to go out there literally ever since I first arrived in the city.

Eleven years later, I finally stopped putting it off.

In 2025 (and 2026, it seems), I’m doing ten things to celebrate living in Pōneke for ten years. There’ll be stories. Pics. Nonsense. Check out the series here.

Matiu has a storied history.

Used as a refuge by pre-Colonial Māori, then acting as a quarantine station for travelers coming into Wellington, as well as an internment camp in both World Wars, the history (both its highlights and its darkness) is palpable the moment you step foot onto the island.

I’d be here all day if I wrote about its many stories, but I do recommend checking out David McGill’s Island of Secrets, and Paddy Richardson’s By the Green of the Spring for more.

The trip to the island isn’t so complicated. Get on the East-by-West ferry down by Master Kong on the Wellington waterfront, drift along on the gentle (or white-capped) waves for 50 minutes as the boat goes to Days Bay to pick up more passengers, and then disembark onto the island after doing a quick quarantine check (as a reserve, DOC doesn’t want foreign ants, seeds or similar on the island, for obvious reasons).

Then, the island is yours to explore. Depending on ferry schedules, you get 1.5-3 hours to wander about at your leisure.

As I’m me and I fundamentally can’t be chill, I used that 1.5 hours to speedrun the entire island, pick up 14 geocaches* and absorb as much information as I could.

The night before, I planned out my route, ensuring I would double back as little as possible. The island isn’t that big, but it is a bit up and down, and I wanted to ensure I had enough time at each spot before I moved onto the next. Route came out to just under 3km, I landed on the island at 10.30 with a deadline of 12.15, and we were off.

First it was off to the easternmost point on the trip, the site of the island’s former degaussing station.

In the Second World War, German forces laid magnetic mines across the entrances of several harbours in Aotearoa – even managing to sink the infamous ship, the RMS Niagara – in Auckland Harbour. As a fun fact, most of the mines in Wellington Harbour haven’t been found. When a ship was degaussed, it became ‘invisible’ to the magnetic mines, and allowed safe passage into the harbour. This process was conducted on Matiu / Somes, by the Wrens.

These days, there’s not much left at the site of the degaussing station, but it’s still a fascinating place to stop off – I definitely didn’t know about Pōneke’s mine-based history, and I will be thinking about the ammo dumps in Wellington Harbour next time I get on a ferry.

Two digital caches safely figured out, I headed back towards the docks and up to the northernmost point of the island, collecting glorious views across to Ngauranga and Petone, before turning south again.

My next stop found me at the memorial cairn.

From 1872, when the immigrant ship ‘England’ arrived with several cases of smallpox on board, Matiu / Somes acted as a quarantine station for those coming into Wellington, both humans and animals; though the island wasn’t used for human quarantine after World War One.

The memorial cairn was placed in the 1970s to remember those buried on the island.

In some places the history is palpable, and on Matiu / Somes it is especially so. Wooden buildings marked with names of animals, cracked concrete splintered through with weeds, and a memorial where the youngest name on it was barely a day old.

Some places are rife with ghosts.

The sadness in some parts of the island is all-encompassing. Though quarantine was more than necessary, the shortcomings – and by extension cruelty – of historical medicine feels staggering.

Smallpox was, and is a horrifying disease.**

I sprinkled my hands and head in water and moved south, following the winding trail, which spat me out at a lookout, before I followed the trail east to the island’s lighthouse, collecting both physical and digital geocaches along the way.

I’m a big fan of lighthouses; my life’s goal is unironically to become a lighthouse keeper, but there’s not a huge amount of them that are accessible to get to in Pōneke. The ones out at Pencarrow are accessible, they’re just interminably dull to travel to, unless you’re a big fan of gravel roads.

This lighthouse is still active, actually. Operated by a keeper from 1866 to 1924, it’s now automated and helps guide ships into Wellington Harbour.

A tramway (pictured below) helped bring goods from the beach up to the lighthouse, and is inaccessible these days – to my disappointment, I adore heritage rail.

Having been pressed against the lighthouse for arguably too many minutes as other people took photos, I scampered away up the hill and up the steepest part of the island to the summit and large anti-aircraft battery on top of it.

These gun emplacements and the nearby command post were built during the Second World War, but much like Wrights Hill Fortress across the harbour, these guns were never fired against an enemy.

As I struggled to reach a geocache at the trig on the summit – much to my chagrin, I continue to only be five foot seven – I shot some pictures for another traveler of them in front of the glorious view and then slid down the hill on my butt on the long dry grass towards the collection of buildings clinging to the hilltop.

These days, Matiu / Somes is a conservation area, having become a reserve for native plants, birds, reptiles and invertebrates including tuatara, kakariki, North Island robin, little blue penguins and wētā.

Historically, these buildings acted as quarantine zones and internment camps. It was surreal to reach the bottom of the hilly slope and come out amongst buildings that had seen so much in the past; to wander through the bumpy terrain and stare off at the former internment barracks*** and animal quarantine barns, ancient weatherboard buildings peeling at the seams.

Eerie. Confronting. An odd place to linger.

Finding more geocaches, I slipped off down towards the wharf again, to eat a muffin and sit in the sun until the Ika Rere showed up to ferry us all back to the city, me at least forever changed.

Matiu / Somes is a deeply strange place. Tranquil in moments, but hard to escape. My thoughts frequent the island now I’ve learned of some of its secrets. Maybe yours will too.

*If you’re a geocacher, you might note there’s not 14+ geocaches on Matiu / Somes – and to that I say – check your AdLabs, there’s another ten in there.

**Matiu / Somes wasn’t just a quarantine zone for smallpox, but for a lot of diseases. One of the most tragic cases is of Kim Lee, who was exiled to “Leper Island” (Mokopuna Island, off Matiu / Somes’ north tip), due fears of leprosy (and likely racial bias.)

I have an interest in epidemiology, and one of the best books I’ve ever read about smallpox is Richard Preston’s The Demon in the Freezer, detailing smallpox and anthrax as biological agents. I’d recommend reading it, but it is harrowing. Also, the phrasing ‘is’ was used as although smallpox is technically eradicated, it still exists in some forms within labs in the world.

***Matiu / Somes Island’s internment history is covered in Paddy Richardson’s novel By The Green of the Spring. 

The wait is over. WITCH Music Theatre is back in town, bringing the candyfloss-sweet hearted magic of Amélie, our new friend at The Hannah (Hannah Playhouse) till Nov 29.

Have you ever opened your favourite childhood story book or movie and wanted to dive right in? Now is your chance to dive into Amélie’s world, which has captured the world’s child-like curiosity since the French motion picture came out in 2001, written by Guillaume Laurant, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet who also directed.

Amélie The Musical is a hop, skip and a song back to the excitement of childhood, where we meet sweet Amélie (Rachel McSweeney) – a curious, spirited 6-year-old with dreams of adventures, and earning the love of her parents (Craig Beardsworth and Gemma Hoskins).

Craig Lucas’s book, and lyrics by Nathan Tysen and Daniel Messé (who also wrote the music) lead us through Amélie’s life and adventures, quickly gaining love from our full house on opening night, with cheers, laughter and applause at the start of each act, not just at the end.

Our tickets welcome us into Amélie’s world in enchanting Paris, where musical director Hayden Taylor’s band bring Parisian street life to Wellington, introducing new friends and characters who support Amélie’s quests alongside finding a proper education, a job, and Elton John (William Duignan) who we adore.

And love? Of course! We all need more love in this world, and this show fills our hearts in every way from the story, music, costumes, set and even puppeteering (James Fisher)  just to really pull on our heartstrings.

I really fall in love with every costume by Polly Crone and Dorothe Olsen,which brings out each character, plus the set by Ben Tucker-Emerson.

The moving lights by Alex “Fish” Fisher are a character themselves that bring this Broadway show to life for us, for a limited time only. The same can be said for the props which would need a team like Courtney Ilton, Scott Maxim, Nick Lerew, Ben and Joshua Tucker-Emerson to stop them running away and help us to follow the story, mysteriously and beautifully mystifying us by the “Mysterious Man” Kevin Orlando.

Being back at Hannah playhouse feels like coming home after its reopening, surrounded by Wellington’s best talent in the audience and onstage – who love this show and pour their souls into it as WITCH always do, led by such genius of our co-directors Maya Nanda-Huff and Nick Lerew who bring a sparkle to everything they touch and everyone in their path.

Amélie takes us further than the world of Paris, to the ultimate escape and joy of childhood where anything is possible, and you should do everything possible not to miss this.

Don’t wait for Christmas, fill the stockings and your heart now with this timeless tale before your time runs out.

Stepping into the Dome stage at Bats on Tuesday night felt almost like intruding. Taking my seat I felt I was brushing past Freya, the character played by writer Tara Weston-Webb, as she sat cross-legged on the floor of her room fastidiously painting brightly coloured icons in a small grid. The approximately 50 minutes of “Messy”, a new play by Weston-Webb, is set in a single flat bedroom adorned in crafted clay mushrooms and dried orange-slice dream catchers that, together with over-stuffed clothes racks, artfully invokes a distinctly-inhabited private space.

In this semi-biographical dark-comedic work the two main actors and co-directors tell a touching story of friendship, self-doubt, and strength. On its surface, Messy is a play about two flatmates figuring out the “what now?” after art school. Gracie (Cayla Louise) works the same retail job she has had for years while she looks for her opportunity to show her paintings. Freya is an accidental drug dealer, improbably yet pleasingly pairing her crafted mushroom sculptures with a “free gift” for those in the know.

The story is told mainly in a series of short conversations between the two friends in that room, with humour that will surprise you and a quick pace to pull you into their relationship in the first few minutes. The intelligent, quipping dialogue is somewhere between Gilmore Girls and an Aaron Sorkin series. Most twenty to thirty somethings will recognise themselves or their friends in these characters, their relationship and experiences. The audience is a third, silent confidant in their rhythmic relationship.

While the story is told in the one room, frequent scene changes keep the narrative moving.  Every transition between scenes was accompanied by a change in costume: Gracie with quick changes in a variety of striking outfits; Freya changing in front of the audience (it is her bedroom after all) in more subtle steps, as if she spends the whole play getting dressed. The constant costume and scene changes contrast with the static staging to give an impression of the self-critical feeling familiar to many including the characters: I’m stuck and everything around me is moving forward. Still, despite the slickness of the scene changes I found myself wishing the co-directors had given us more time to linger with the characters at the end of some of the more tender scenes.

The two main actors and co-directors gave natural and complete performances. The physicality of Louise screaming into a pillow with her whole person was particularly memorable, as were Weston-Webb’s slightly sarcastic direct to audience speeches exposing her character’s anxieties. A short appearance from Sarah Penny as Annie toward the end of the play gave depth and context to the flatmates’ relationship.

“Messy” runs for two more nights at 7pm at Bats and is about 50 minutes long. If you can’t make it, cross your fingers for a reprisal in a future festival.