Frisky and Mannish is a British musical comedy duo featuring Laura Corcoran as Frisky (vocals) and Matthew Jones as Mannish (piano, vocals). Their show, School of Pop, runs through the hidden meanings in the lyrics of pop songs.

And it works because it is often very funny and in the moments when it is not exactly hilarious the musical talents of Corcoran and Jones shine through.

We are told that the late 1990s chart hit was actually about Tudor England. Next thing TLC's No Scrubs is being sung to the tune of Greensleeves. From there, the duo constantly darts back and forth between highbrow and lowbrow culture; often winningly combining aspects of both.

Musically and comically, the highlight of the night was when Frisky as Lily Allen and Mannish as Noel Coward took turns singing the songs of each other's character; it showcased the duo's unique skills as well as showing that the meaning of a song can change when the character that sings it changes.

There were other great examples of this - Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights became Wuvvering Heights in the hands of Frisky, working as if a character from Little Britain or Harry Enfields's Television Programme.

And with a touch of desperation in the way The Bangles' Eternal Flame was sung, lines such as "I watch you when you are sleeping/you belong to me" took on a creepy, sinister tone.

That was a common trick to many of the song interpretations.

Sometimes the whole song was not required - brilliantly, Meat Loaf's I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) was sung by Frisky as a four-year-old girl. A furious head shake in time with the line "but I won't do that" told the whole (new) story.

Joan Osborne's One of Us and Alanis Morissette's Ironic are simply fodder for comedians, but in the hands of Frisky and Mannish the laughs still come because of the physical comedy they are capable of.

In this case these songs were performed as if the performers were stoned, slapping thighs and hacking out coughs after putting across their hackneyed philosophies and confused metaphors.

Pop music should never take itself seriously - and if it does it is good to know Frisky and Mannish will be there to poke fun, to point out the inherent absurdities and to impress with their musical abilities.

The audience, understandably, loved the performance.

There is a line in Frisky & Mannish's musical misappropriation of the Ting Tings' track ‘That's Not My Name' when they weave in a direct quote from a recent critic's review. Here's one from Time Out Sydney they can use for their Mardi Gras season run at the Opera House studio until 7 March, if they so wish. "Frisky & Mannish are clever, inventive, polished, prodigiously talented and extremely funny. Five glittering stars."

This cabaret duo have taken the UK by storm in the last year and were one of the stand-out shows at last year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Our sister Time Out titles in London and New York have raved about them. And now we can whole-heartedly join in the chorus.

Their shtick is to play around with popular songs. This they do through the conceit of a day at the School of Pop; each song a different lesson. Thus we learn about Tudor history through the prism of TLC's ‘No Scrubs'. And we have a musical spelling class via a medley of tracks such as ‘R-E-S-P-E-C-T' and ‘D-I-S-C-O'. Meanwhile, melding the highbrow with the lowbrow, people's champion Lily Allen wryly responds to a musical challenge laid down by literary giant Noel Coward.

With her booming voice, Frisky conducts most of the lessons - part overbearing school matron, (ample) part saucy dominatrix with a lot of front. You can imagine her wielding a whip with relish. Mannish, on vocals and keys, is more than merely a classroom assistant. He is a kohl-eyed musical sprite in iridescent meggings with perfect comical timing. Both are very talented all-round cabaret performers: musicians, dancers, comedians, actors.

There were a couple of bum notes on opening night. They might want to edit out the sketch that lampoons the short-lived UK girl band All Saints. And there was an incongruous and borderline off-colour dance routine from a partially-sighted paralympian that limped down a blind alley. But otherwise the show is a complete triumph. Without spoiling it, listen out in particular for Meatloaf as if sung by a toddler. So, so wrong it's right.

Boys and girls: the School of Pop is in session. Book in for a class now. Dan Rookwood

Mary Stuart by Friedrich Schiller, directed by Ross Jolly
Circa Theatre, until April 3

There are two compelling reasons to see Mary Stuart, which was first performed in 1800 in Germany, and they are the tremendous performances of Tina Regtien and Carmel McGlone as the two queens caught up in a tangle of lethal political, dynastic, and religious forces that rent Europe.

It is an endlessly fascinating story and one that Schiller plays with for his own philosophical and theatrical purposes. The great scene when Mary and Elizabeth confront each other at Fotheringay Castle never happened and his scheming Mortimer (Nathan Meister), who attempts to free Mary, is also pure fiction.

Schiller's blank verse has been translated by David Harrower into flexible modern prose, which no doubt reduces the almost operatic force of the original (so I have read) into something more commonplace, in that Elizabeth's courtiers can now be more easily seen as duplicitous politicians in a contemporary political thriller with religious fundamentalist overtones, which, of course, at one level it is.

This is underlined by the costumes of the male courtiers, who are dressed in modern business suits, while the queens and Mary's lady-in-waiting (the admirable Darien Takle) are in rich traditional period costumes. Only when the men don Elizabethan short cloaks on top of their suits do they appear ridiculous, as do the effete French ambassadors (played for laughs by Gerald Bryan and Nick Dunbar) in anachronistic berets and sashes of the revolutionary tricolour.

But any production of this tragedy only succeeds with two actors who can carry off the emotional demands of their roles. In this Regtien and McGlone are in perfect accord. Regtien's Mary goes to her execution with nobility and dignity while her explosion of anger at Elizabeth that seals her death is thrillingly done.

McGlone's Elizabeth is a subtle mixture of fear, pride and sexual desire as seen in her erotic dance with Leicester (Aaron Alexander), but her most memorable scenes are when she vacillates with Davison (Gavin Rutherford) over the sending of the death warrant and the final scene when she is alone, isolated, the victim of realpolitik.

Good Morning, Mr Gershwin

St James Theatre, until March 20

This is one adorable, bouncy, charged, delightful, elegant performance that puts all the verve and panache of French up-tempo choreography simultaneously on to screen and stage. You expect a suite of clever, sexy dances to recorded Gershwin songs, some solos, some trios, some bright, some blue, which is what you get plus a thousand times more.

The superb evening is a homage to Gershwin without any mawkishness. The music is wonderfully sequenced, all 38 numbers details credited in the programme as you always want but so rarely get. The show is sassy, funny and very sexy, the nudity could not possibly offend, and no-one on stage is a virgin.

Many bodies swimming underwater are shown on huge video screens, as echo rather than mirror to the live dancers on stage below, many of whom also defy gravity as thought they too were underwater.

Breathtaking virtuosic break dancers evoke the rubber-legged Nicholas Brothers, and in many slinky body moves there are generous quotes to Josephine Baker and the negrophilia that so turned Paris in the 1920s and 30s. Tap dancing gives a nod to the Irish who took their shoes whereever they migrated, and even Carmen Miranda features.

Equisite cameos of baroque dance, Folies d'Espagne, are captured with stunning elegance in filigree silhouette, by a svelte blonde dancer who by the end of the evening has become my embraceable you (and oh lord, how she can sing) so we're talking 17th-century Versailles now.

The choreographers, Dominique Hervieu and Jose Montalvo, have worked with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants in France, and it shows. All the music feeds all the dance, and vice versa.

Only the French would know and care about their own dance and theatre history enough to stitch such antique fragments into a throughly modern cavalcade that puts French adoration of Gershwin up in lights, giving the American in Paris all he could want. And us too.

Fish are jumping, and that's funny, but a baby is crying, and that's not funny. Through a profoundly moving and unexpected metamorphosis, the show now turns to witness the pain and hurt of black peoples' history. Alabama and all the troubles in the south, a body hanging from a tree, howles of sorrow, but hush little baby, don't you cry...

Now the breakdance sequences mean something a great deal more than just clever displays on the pavement. It is a choreographic masterstroke to find such ways to charge meaning into movement. Filmed sequences of a malevolent roaring ocean and howling tornado bring the plight of the poor in New Orleans, Pago Pago and Hait sharply to mind. It is genius at work to follow all the threads of Gershwin's music thought into this work of benevolent intelligence. I quote from the programme essay by Vincent Fafis, which is the model every artistic endeavour should aspire to produce about itself.

Wherever you live, take a bus, train, boat or plane, or just hitch a ride for this festival's knockout show. The last song, Finale Ultimo, by John Mauceri, is worth the ticket price alone. The two tracks before - A Red-Headed Woman Make a Choochoo Jump its Track, and Oh Lawd, I'm On My Way - say it all.

TR Warszawa's T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T., directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna, is a standout work of the 2010 New Zealand International Arts Festival. This play is an adaptation of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema, the 1968 film and the later novel of the same name. The subtlety of Jarzyna's production closely follows the near-wordless film, in which pure emotions and base human urges are rendered with a stunning visual palette. People familiar with Pasolini's work will appreciate the explicitly filmic quality of Jarzyna's play. Each gesture, each small movement, is captured by the uncannily cinematic lighting design, which gives an understated and riveting aesthetic. The costumes depict late-sixties European elegance; the music meshes evocatively minimal incidents.

The narrative is structurally simple: the stripped-back dialogue draws the focus to the most intimate physical details, details which are used to articulate and construct theatrical space. This spatial imagery relies on tremendous acting; the ensemble from TR Warszawa performs with precision and vibrancy. Jan Englert, who heads the cast, made his film debut in Andrzej Wajda's 1957 work Kanal, a film which defined the course of modern Polish cinema. In T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T, Englert plays an industrialist and patriarch whose family is systematically seduced by a mysterious visitor (played by Sebastian Pawlak). These meaningless seductions strip back the layers of delusion which envelop the family, exposing the terrible emptiness of their lives: a romp of European nihilism ensues.

The fact that Jarzyna's work is born out of a difficult, elusive film is reflected in the play: this piece may appeal more to connoisseurs of the visual, though there is plenty of humour and erotic spectacle too. The pace of the work is meticulous and unhurried, but the audience is rewarded for their attention, and the critical allusions that have been made to Hitchcock and his use of suspense are not unwarranted. The set embraces the challenge of representing the domestic interior, but only so we are convinced enough to be able to focus on the finely performed actions. The lighting is intricate, and staggeringly effective in shifting and building psychological tension from one scene to the next. A particularly compelling effect is the imitation of patches of light falling through open windows and doors, on to the white floor and the actors as they pace about.

The production uses a deep stage, and a closely (and, some have complained, claustrophobically) positioned audience. When characters leave the play permanently, they literally exit the theatre. Despite this close reference to the theatre's actual space, the space is also used to produce cinematic images. This filmic aspect is not mimetic, but rather composes an artificial real, an intense visuality which is both demanding and absorbing.  Simple actions like the brushing of hair express the tense space which the figures inhabit. Jarzyna's direction masterfully manipulates the dramatic potential of near-motionless, silent characters. TR Warszawa's publicity materials, describing the existentialist philosophy of Karl Jaspers, presciently suggest that Jarzyna's motionless heroes "almost explode the frame of the stage with the energy coming from within them." The repeated makeup routine of the mother intones the illusoriness of the family's materialistic existence. In other moments, one character walks towards another in repetitions which expresses both hope and fatality.

The overall achievement of T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. is its power to narrate with few of the conventions of action and dialogue that audiences are accustomed to. It has some less successful moments: the 'audience' interaction of the opening risks mystifying an audience unfamiliar with Pasolini's film and its wider social and political commentary. The end of the production unnecessarily allegorises the work into the contemporary social context, when each character's downfall has already been so powerfully rendered, though this allegory would resonate more with Polish audiences. Jan Englert's performance in these scenes is one of pure gravitas, but both sections rely on verbal performance, a mode which the rest of the production largely does without. These, however, are reservations prompted by the otherwise stunning coherence of the work: theatre speaks to us as strongly as ever in the age of Avatar

Freiburg Baroque Orchestra conducted by Rene Jacobs

Music by Haydn and Mozart.

Town Hall, Wednesday 17 March

At the 2006 international festival we hard the authentic instrument orchestra The Age of Enlightenment, and the contrast between that and the Freiburg orchestra heard in this concert is as great as could be imagined.

When the English orchestra, for all the sound of natural horns and baroque oboes, was still silky in the strings in the manner of a throughly informed modern instrument band, the Freiburg players unambiguously dragged the listener back to the 18th century with more sharply delineated authentic timbres in all sections.

Rene Jacobs, of course, had a great deal to do with things, for he is an unashamed advocate of the 18th-century "sound" as he perceived it and, coupled with the completely operatic approach to the classical repertoire he adpts, the result are immensely involving for musicians and audience alike.

And what energy and verve informed the performances fof the two great symphonies that opened and closed this concert.

Haydn's Symphony No 91 isn't played that often but, after a performance like this, you would have to wonder why.

This was, quite simply, as fine a performance of a Haydn symphony as I have heard and, if all performances of his works were as fine as this, then his position as one of the grats of Western music would be better appreciated.

The Town Hall acoustic helped immeasurably, allowing the dramatic contrasts to tell, yet also gave great bloom to the strings, and depth and colour to the winds.

Jacobs is a famous Mozartean, yet I didn't think the performance of the Symphony No 38 "Prague" was quite on the same level.

His approach - very theatrical - suited this side of Mozarts less well than it did the Haydn, and the finale, while a presto, was just a hint breathless.

In between we heard an astonishing performance of Mozart's Horn Concerto No 4, with its famous Rondo, on the natural horn, played by Teunis van der Zwart,. Not only was it musically captivating, but also an amazing feat on the valveless instrument.

A great concert, with the encore - the finale from Haydn's "Oxford" Symphony - promising similar delights tonight.

The Walworth Farce by Enda Walsh, idrected by Mikel Murfi

The Opera House, until March 21

Theatrical games are afoot in The Walworth Farce, a tragi-comedy set 15 floors up in a squalid South London council flat where Irishman Dinny and his two sons, Blake and Sean, live in their own insulated world and where they carry out a daily ritual that they have apparently been doing for nearly 20 years.

The ritual is a performance of a farce that has been written by Dinny about his fictional life in Ireland, his departure from Cork and his arrival in London. The three men perform the farce with furious action, disguises, cross-dressing, outrageous jokes and madcap situations.

Overseas critics have described it as if it were being performed by the Three Stooges.

I would agree with this but add that, like the Three Stooges, the farce is very rarely funny, yet its scenes go on ad infinitum played at a frenetic speed and very, very loudly till it simply becomes tedious in the extreme.

And then reality steps into this mad theatrical whirl in the form of Hayley, a Tesco checkout girl who has taken a liking to Sean, the only one allowed out to buy food.

Hayley's presence creates problems for Dinny but she is eventually brought into the action and slowly we gather, if we hadn't already guessed some time before, that Dinny is using fantasy and ritual to hide darker, unpleasant truths.

It is also made clear that this is a national failing - not a message that many Irish will want to hear on St Patrick's Day.

The point is actually made evident right from the beginning when we see the three getting ready for the day's performance (vocal and physical exercises and the preparation of wigs and costumes) and hear the dulcet tones of Bing Crosby as he sings When Irish Eyes are Smiling. At the end we hear him again, singing An Irish Lullaby.

The acting is deliberately way, way over the top and meant to be bad.

Even when it all calms down a bit and the characters become, for a short time, human beings, it is still hard to find any sympathy for any of them - except for Hayley, who is played most movingly by Mercy  Ojelade.

Two plays about the embarrassment of the human mind

John Daly-Peoples | Sunday March 14, 2010 - 10:49pm

11 & 12 by Peter Brook
St James Theatre
Until March 14

Theoremat, by Grzegorz Jarzyna
TSB Bank Arena
Until March 19

With "11 & 12" and "Theoremat" the festival provided two outstanding plays by two major international directors. One by a director who has changed the face of theatre over the last half century and the other who will probably change theatre over the next half century.

If Richard Dawkins were reviewing the two plays he would get apoplectic about them. He would lament the wasted energy and creativity which has gone into the debates, both large and small about understanding God and the sacred.

The plays, he would lament show mankind's great flaw, spending so much time and energy in the pursuit of primitive beliefs dressed up as a spurious form of philosophical thought.

Would he have seen Brook as an apologist for the good that comes from the personal search for the truth or as falling for the same spiritual claptrap that has turned the heads of many sensible people over the centuries in all cultures.

"11 & 12" is a play by older man looking back on his own life and the life of the theatre. It is tinged with the wisdom and regret which is said to come with age

It is also contemplation on the profundities and insanities of religious fanatics and their followers.

Religion in this play is paired with colonialism and is set in French Mali in the 1930's and 1950's. The overlay of Islam on the country is akin to the imposition of French rule over the territory. Both sets of rules have been enforced for the good of the people, a belief in the need for order and the purity of truth. But both are culturally destructive.

There are twinned stories; one of a young man who leaves his village to work for the French, the other is the ongoing rivalry between a mystic and an imam about the religious nicety of whether a prayer should be recited eleven or twelve times.

The tiny theological debate results in animosity and violence and when it is used as a political tool what follows is widespread death and destruction.

Brook attempts to show how individuals attempt to understand the realities of society, religion and politics but as one of his characters says,"There is your truth, my truth and the truth."

The play is not so much theatre as the slow unfolding of a fable. A group of men sitting in a space somewhere between dessert, village square and mosque reworking a tale which is centuries old as well as of today.

"Theoremat", based on a Pier Pasolini film of the 1960's would probably be categorised as being "Theatre of Despair" or "Theatre of Unfulfilled Dreams."

It concerns a wealthy man, his wife, two children and the maid. Over one day they are transformed or corrupted by an enigmatic visitor.

The transformation takes the form of seduction but it is not just a sexual awakening for each of the characters but rather they gain knowledge about themselves and their place in society.

At one level the play is a tirade against the excesses of capitalism but at another it is about the weakness of individuals to understand their need to play a role in their family and the wider society.

When the play opens the wealthy industrials tells us he will take questions before he proceeds. There are several questions from plants in the audience, the first one - "What do you think of New Zealand", gets the reply "I don't understand the question", this was followed by the serious one "Do you believe in god?" again "I dont understand the question"

That reply is at the heart of much of the play with the characters not understanding what their roles are. They are there in part to allow the audiences to observe and comment on their life so that when a final group of people onscreen are asked if they believe in miracles it is the audience who is being questioned - has what we have seen on the stage, the transformation of individuals, been a miracle, an awakening or a deception.

Throughout the play the audience are voyeurs of the family's dynamics, its secrets and its indiscretions. The characters in return acknowledge out presence even occasionally addressing us directly.

With the slowly evolving scenes the audience is able to concentrate on observing the characters, becoming aware of the stillness and spaces between them. It is the physical manifestation of the personal distance between the characters.

What gives the play its intensity and drama is the brilliant staging; a combination of lighting, music, sets and superb acting.

The lighting owes much to the original film and other Italian films of the 1960's but also the dramatic lighting of Hollywood films of the 1930'sw and 50's.

Each of the sequences is like an individual cinematic scene with each building on the other to create a frightening level of emotional complexity.

Possibly Richard Dawkins would quote from Peter Brook's mystic who replies to the question "What is god?" with the ambivalent statement "God is the embarrassment of the human mind."

The Tragical Life of Cheeseboy by Finnegan Kruckemeyer

directed by Andy Packer for Slingsby

Capital E until Sunday 21 March

Whimsical and offbeat shows are becoming a common feature at this year's International Arts Festival and The Tragical Life of Cheeseboy is no exception. The only difference is that it is a play for children.

The creation of Finegan Kruckemeyer and Andy Packer for children's theatre company Slingsby from Adelaide, Cheeseboy, which opened this weekend at Capital E, is a quirky tale narrated by Stephen Sheehan with the assistance of Sam McMahon and Roland Partis.

Within a tent-like structure set up within Capital E, Sheehan and his team, dressed in Victorian costumes, regale the audience with their story from the front of the tent, which is strewn with Victorian-like bric-a-brac.

This is his playground, Sheehan tells the audience. From here he gently and rhythmically narrates how Cheeseboy, living on a planet of cheese, is the only survivor when the planet is hit by a meteor and turned into a fondue, and how he then embarks on a series of adventures looking for his missing parents.

He lands on Earth, on a beach, and spends his time making paper boats that he hopes will sail away to bring them back.

He eventually gives up on this idea and, with the aid of a couple of gypsies, heads inland to the towns in search of his parents.

He lands on Earth, on a beach, and spends his time making paper boats that he hopes will sail away to bring them back.

He eventually gives up on this idea and, with the aide of a couple of gypsies, heads inland to the towns in search of his parents.

Using theatrical devices such as film projections, finger puppets, magical suitcases, sandcastles and imaginative and evocative lighting, and aided by Quentin Grant's rich and emotive soundscape, Cheeseboy's story slowly unfolds.

The music and lighting work well. The lighting verges on the dark side of dim and the devices have a certain captivating effect on the younger members of the audience. The writing has a certain lyricism about it.

But Sheehan's laidback narrative style fails to gain any momentum or create any drawing power as a good storyteller should.

One of the group has been quoted as saying the production is "soft, not in-your-face", which it certainly isn't and may well be why it appeals to its target market of younger viewers.

The 14-year-old accompanying this reviewer said that Cheeseboy was a "cool" show, the coming-of-age story intriguing and that the inventive effects greatly enhanced the story, which probably means that the approach taken with this production has worked.

It Was 40 Years Ago Today

T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.
A TR Warszawa Production
13, 14, 16-19 March, 8pm
TSB Bank Arena

The 1960s were a highwater mark for the kind of glacially-paced and existentially introspective cinema that hardly anyone makes - or watches - any more, and no one made those movies quite like the Italians: think of directors such as Visconti, Antonioni, Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Polish theatre director Grzegorz Jarzyna has adapted Pasolini's 1968 film Theorem as T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T., which makes an odd sort of counterpoint to the earlier festival show Sound of Silence. The two Eastern European theatre companies present very different takes on sex and the social changes of the 1960s.

In both productions, sex is a subversive act, but in Silence it was the dourly authoritarian surveillance state machinery of the USSR that was subverted. T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. makes almost the reverse case, documenting the disintegration of the members of a wealthy Italian family after a visitor comes to stay and seduces each of them in turn, exposing them to the possibility of personal self-fulfilment and a life outside the conventions and compulsions of the family, the law and the capitalist economy.

If anything locates the production most specifically in the 1960s, other than the immaculately modernist set design and costumes, it's the idea that sex could pose a threat to the consumer society and advanced capitalism. You only have to look to Italy in 2010, where president Silvio Berlusconi's party is accused of death - murdered in 1975, ostensibly at the hands of a young man he picked up for sex but long suspected to have been politically motivated. (Pasolini had called for the leaders of Italy's ruling right-wing party to be put on trial, something that Berlusconi is still, 40 years later, trying to avoid.)

So for all that T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. may be something of a period piece, it's a reminder that even the discredited ideas of history (Pasolini was both a Catholic and a marxist) can have new things to show us.

One thing I appreciated about T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. was its relentless thoroughness in documenting the characters' decline. The visitor leaves about half way through, and during the second half (though there is no interval) whenever you think things can't get any worse for the ones left behind - they do.

The play is mostly wordless, but towards the end words come thick and fast. Too quickly for me to really take in the subtitled text, enjoy those glorious consonant-rich Polish voices and absorb the sparse yet complex staging. Perhaps it didn't matter too much: the verbal imagery mirrored the aircraft take-off electronic sheen of the score, eventually sweeping away the debris of repression and existential crisis to leave us on a surprisingly optimistic note, with birds singing on the telephone wires and a plea - is this the real legacy of the 1960s? - to "Love, Love".

Ideas worlds apart but here the twain shall meet

Much of New Zealand's colonial history has been recorded from a British perspective, yet few probably realise that a prominent American travelling through the country in the mid-1890's made some rather astute observations on our race relations, whcih didn't go down well with his fellow Europeans.

The American was Mark Twain, on a worldwide speaking tour to raise money to pay off debts. Arriving in New Zealand, he visited many towns, including Whanganui, which is where David Geary obtained ideas for his play Mark Twain & Me in Māoriland.

Yet while the play shows us Twain's attitudes toward colonialism, organised religion and racism, he almost becomes superfluous, his writings acting as a mirror to reflect what was happening in Whanganui at the time.

And it is the Maori aspect at the heart of the play that works most successfully. In a series of vignettes using various types of theatre styles, including vaudeville, Western-style movies, narrative and mixing dramatic realism with elements of the surreal, numerous incidences occuring in Whanganui at that time are portrayed.

Symbols of the present are also incorporated into the production, such as the bright orange plastic bag over Twain's head and the half-filled plastic water bottle as a paddle, the sound of the water sloshing most effective.

Considered a superstar of the period, Twain (Stephen Papps) is introduced at various times to the populace of Whanganui during entertainment evenings at the Oddfellows Hall. he is taken up the river, then spends much of his time observing and writing about what he sees and hears.

The simple set of a large white canvas across the stage running right up to the back wall and beyond - no doubt symbolising the river - with black curtains is effectively used by the confident and spirited cast.

Under John Bolton's direction, they bring much physicality and dexterity to their perfomances. The hilarious vaudeville double act of the Anglican priest (Aaron Cortesi) and Catholic priest (Allan Henry) is in complete contrast to the creative and dramatic battle on Moutoa Island between the Hauhau and local Whanganui Maori with Ra (Maaka Pohatu), assisted by Piki (Ngapaki Emery), leading the charge in spectacular fashion.

And although the many threads don't always weave this production into a satisfying whole, it is nevertheless another commendable New Zealand production giving a fascinating insight into a little-known piece of history that resonates as much with today as it does with the past, aptly summed up in the words of Mark Twain - history may not repeat, but it sure does rhyme a lot.

Enter The Dragon: Karsh Kale & Midival Punditz

Pacific Blue Festival Club, Tuesday March 16 and Wednesday March 17

This performance features a screening of Enter The Dragon, the 1973 martial arts film that introduced Bruce Lee to the world as a superstar.

It was also his last film. For this screening a brand new soundtrack has been imagined - and is performed live - by Karsh Kale and Midival Punditz. Kale wrote the score, which features pre-recorded sequences as well as his own live tabla and drum-kit performances.

The Punditz are responsible for triggering the pre-recorded components and the onstage sound production and treatments; weaving a bold new pulse under a film that is a classic of its genre.

Kale's tabla playing is masterful, the heel of the left hand providing a proud murmur, the fingers on the right cheekily scampering.

His kit-playing features regular cymbal splashing and crashing, the bass and high hat working together to provide occasional references to the film's original score.

Enter The Dragon was originally soundtracked by Lalo Schifrin, a master of modern cinima scores - so Kale and the Punditz are attempting to tread in big footprints.

They manage, mostly by sidestepping, accenting the film's eastern themes and settings with bamboo flute and tabla and then combining these components with modern electro flourishes. It is an interesting exercise - to watch a live soundtrack unfold in real time/reel time.

There are moments when the new music chokes some of the poetry of the film, but for the brief occasions in which it might be construed as poverpowering, there are new chance encounters: new moments of symmetry between what the film is hoping to achieve and the aims of the new score.

And as the action builds, the score follows - the final fight sequences serve up several brilliant bursts of sound colour playing with and against the choreography of the fighting.

T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. written and directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna

TSB Bank Arena, until March 19

I propose a boycott of TSB Arena as a venue for theatrical productions until something is done about the seating, particularly as T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. lasts for 130 minutes and has no interval to stretch one's legs.

Having got that off my chest, I have to report that T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. is, at one level, pretty tough going. Its insipration comes from Teorema, Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1968 cult movie, of which a noted acerbic film critic said that, if it was not the worst film ever made, "you can't blame it for not trying."

A more puzzled critic described it as "perversely difficult", but went on to write that "it is serene, that it is ridiculous, that it has the power at some subterranean level to remain in your memory long after you think you've dismissed it".

Polish director Grzegorz Jarzyna's stage adaptation follows the film's plot closely: a rich industrialist's family is disrupted when a complete stranger walks into his home and proceeds to seduce one and all. When the stranger mysteriously leaves, the industrialist, his wife, son, daughter and the maid go to pieces.

Who is the visitor? Pasolini said he was a hypothesis and that he represents the divine, and that his film was largely about the cage of words in which we are all ensnared.

The film has apparently only 923 words in it; the stage version probably has a few more (there are surtitles) but the speech is not important - except at the beginning and end - images are. The director is reported as saying the family reflects contemporary society and at the root of it is the growing concept of consumerism.

The play begins and ends with a press conference in which the industrialist, who has given his factory to the workers as a result of the stranger's visit, is questoned about miracles, God, captialism and morality.

At the start he answers arrogantly, at the end his answers reflect what he has learnt from the stranger: we have all lost our way.

The connection between what is said at the last press conference and the scenes of a sterile, moribund family life seem to me to be tenuous. Sex with the stranger, which Pasolini described as metaphorical, makes them all see their lives differently, though why they behave as they eventually do is never made clear.

However, while the play remains an irritating puzzle, the setting, staging, lighting, music and the acting are without doubt quite wonderful and will remain long in my memory.

Auckland's Nightsong Productions and Theatre Stampede have premiered in Wellington a joyous, theatrical tour de force.

A triumph in 360 degrees, it has the brilliant conceit of being staged with the audience in the round, planted on swivel chairs while the action occurs on a circular ramp around them. This could so easily have been a case of style over substance, but instead the work's strength is that content, form and structure reflect each other beautifully.

Writers Carl Bland and Peta Rutter have woven a surreal, multi-layered meditation on life's circular shape and unpredictable motion through the familiar story of a son leaving home and then trying to find his way back again. It is like a rich, lyrical interior monologue brought to fantastical showbiz life by a travelling troupe of players in a dream pavilion.

Matching the script's almost Joycean rhapsodic absurdist tangents, an outstanding creative team throw every visual theatre trick in the book into the ring.

Movement, puppetry, object theatre and a smart 360 degree soundscape and lighting design amplify the work's joyous celebration of the adventurousness needed to make leaps into the unknown in life.

It has all the magic of an old fashioned children's pop-up storybook.

Centred around a circus family - in which there is no mother but instead an adorable lifelike performing seal (one of a number of pieces of gorgeous puppetry) - the eldest son Gee leaves only to find life is a series of returns. Gee is played by three different actors at different stages of life, sometimes all on stage at the same time. Beautifully cast, the company are an adventurous mix of seasoned professionals and talented newcomers. All shine.

In the manner of a circle the play is about how life can be seen as starting and returning to the same place. With the actors popping up and strolling around you, you have to constantly readjust your position in relation to everybody else. It can feel like being in the barrel of a camera, time spinning backwards and forwards. This echoes 360's exploration of how, as the world spins, time has a habit of catching up with itself. Your memories start to overlay each other to cause strange subconscious meetings.

The text contains echoes of the movement of the work itself, noting for example that a character is "swinging wildly between subjects", "constantly spinning, not going anywhere" or that "when you're going this fast you can't quite focus on what's going past the window". Comments like these provide some comfort as you struggle to follow the story, echoing the jumpy nature of the work's construction.

The narrative detail is very hard to follow. This is particularly the case with the eldest Gee who plays a narrator who isn't in control of the telling of his own story (no disrespect to Bruce Phillips's strong performance in the role). He is more like an absurdist echo of Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, submerged in memory, playing tapes of his younger self over and over.

*360 runs from March 12-21 at Te Whaea, as part of the NZ International Arts Festival in Wellington.

Call it Festival fever or madness, but we're making a limited amount of $20* tickets available for 48 hours for four fabulous shows to celebrate the last few days of the 2010 Festival. It's your last chance to soak up the Pacific Blue Festival Club before we bring it all down after the final show on 21 March.

*Important stuff
- Service fees will apply
- Tickets are limited
- This offer runs from Fri 12 Mar, 6pm until Sun 14 Mar, 6pm or until allocation sold out.
- Tickets available for sale through Ticketek

WED 17 MAR, 10.15pm Enter the Dragon with Karsh Kale & Midival Punditz
Bruce Lee's cult movie with a kickin' new soundtrack performed live.
THU 18 MAR, 7.30pm St Vincent
Award-winning Texan musician Annie Clark is the next big thing, her music is an indie dreamscape of precise pop songs and big, swoony ballads.
THU 18 MAR, 10.15pm Frisky & Mannish
Experience Frisky and Mannish's School of Pop and you will never think of Michael Jackson or The Bangles the same way again!
SAT 20 MAR, 7.30pm Los Amigos Invisibles
Check out these Latin Grammy winners as they mix their infectious blend of Latin rhythms, funk, disco and acid jazz with the flavour of their native Venezuela.

Good theatre makes the world go round

360

Created and directed by Carl Bland, Ben Crowder and Peter Rutter

Te Whaea National Dance and Drama Cenre, until March 19

One thing that is absolutely clear about New Zealand's theatrical contribution to the 2010 International Arts Festival so far is that it has been outstanding. Shows such as The Letter Writer, Apollo 13, The Arrival and Ship Songs demonstrate an achievement of a high order. One can now add 360 to this impressive list.

Our old inferiority complex of not being quite good enough when we compare ourselves with overseas efforts is long dead. We have a flowering of wit, imagination, and skill in staging and performance that we should be celebrating. And we should be doing that in the best way possible which is by attending the performances.

360 is a collaboration between two Auckland-based theatre companies and its novelty, which, by the way, isn't a gimmick, is that the audience, limited to 85, is seated on swivel chairs and sits in a circle surrounded by the circular stage.

Just as I got over my childish desire to swing my seat round and round just for the hell of it, the play started with a wonderfully old-fashioned family circus act that had me fooled for a second or two that a live seal was on stage too. The seal and later a bird are scene stealers but then so is each member of the cast.

The story covers 50 years and is about a man called Gee who is looking back on his life and what happened to him when, as a young man, he left his family and the circus to make a fortune, find fame, and live his own life. He is played old by Bruce Phillips, middle-aged by Edwin Wright, and young by Milo Cawthorne.

Eventually he returns (a nicely staged railway scene) and comes to realise that, as a Tom Stoppard character says, "a circle is the longest distance to the same point". During this journey – Gee calls it "a walk" – he is looking for himself and the love that once enveloped him.

On the way we see a knife-throwing act that looks remarkably real, Gee's sister being shot across our heads as a cannon ball, and occasional glimpses of the moon; and film of a man jumping off the Eiffel Tower; and Ray Henwood as the father amusingly pottering on dispensing advice on everything; while Olivia Tennet appears as a chanteuse singing Maybe God is Sexually Shy; and Edwin Wright rattles off a vibrant song-and-dance act.

At times the show is not always clear in its intentions, but it gave this slightly jaded theatregoer a gloriously entertaining 70 minutes.

Way back in the 1970s I was lucky enough to see two landmark productions directed by Peter Brook: his black box 'circus' version of A Midsummer Night's Dream for the RSC, with Alan Howard's Oberon on a trapeze, and The Conference of the Birds, based on an ancient Persian poem and developed during his fabled African sojourn (with a young Helen Mirren included in the multi-cultural ensemble cast).

I still recall the seismic shift the latter caused in western theatre. We were already breaking the bounds of conventional drama and challenging the status quo; Brook in many ways led 'the establishment' into riding the 'alternative/underground' groundswell into respectability. But it was The Conference of the Birds that reconnected us with the primal roots of storytelling and theatre's role in revitalising ancient wisdoms in our own quest for enlightenment.  

Am I expecting too much, then, of 11 and 12? I wouldn't have thought so, even if Peter Brook is 85 now. If ever we needed a play that threw light on the apparently unstoppable phenomenon of religious wars, tribal massacres and sectarian violence that litter our news media every day, it is now. And who better than Brook to play midwife to a play sourced from the true life experiences of Sufi mystic Tierno Bokar?

The set is redolent of The Conference, with its earth-red stage cloth, sky-red backcloth and stylised tree trunks, although here it is not 'in the round' but framed within the proscenium arch of the very conventional St James theatre. A cluster of Eastern musical instruments, downstage left, promises live music - and so it transpires, from composer Toshi Tsuchitori: a variously vivid and subcutaneous soundscape for the story.

The well-publicised premise is that a difference of opinion as to whether a prayer should be recited 11 or 12 times escalates into - or primes the pump of - hatred and violence in French colonial Africa. I had wondered if it would be an absurdist satire like The Gods Must Be Crazy but no, this play and production takes itself very seriously, although it is not without humour.

There are stories within stories. Initially Tunji Lucas, in the role of Amkoullel, acts a narrator as the process by which the 11 prayer format accidentally became 12 is acted out by the ensemble cast. Later the narrator function will be randomly distributed, disspating any sense of authorial perspective.

Meanwhile the Sufi mystic Tierno Bokar (Makram J Khoury) uses a sand-pouring ritual to discover and appoint Cherif Hamallah (Khalifa Natour) as his 'true tutor' successor, although Hamallah says it is too soon ... Being teachers, "Let me tell you a story" prefaces many a fable told to illustrate a point and make us ponder.

The French administration - characterised as two-dimensional bastards no matter who wears the jackets of office - has its own ideas about who should teach what to whom. And for them the status quo is 12, so anyone suggesting a return to the original 11 comes to be seen as an enemy of the state.

Nevertheless the 11s and 12s manage to coexist, happily tolerating each other's beliefs, until "the teapot incident" ...

Now let me be clear: I am very happy to accommodate the leisurely pace, punctuated by very occasional bursts of more lively action, sometimes comical, sometimes violent. I appreciate the simple ways such things as a boat are created. And there is plenty of time to consider, objectively, what is unfolding ... so I can't help wondering, about half-an-hour in, how credible this 'teaching tale' can be when women have no status in its universe.

Mothers, wives and children do get mentioned but they have no involvement in 'the important things in life', whether it is ruling the state, seeking enlightenment or teaching wisdom. The only significant female character to physically appear is the wife - played somewhat for laughs by one of the seven male actors - in 'the teapot incident'. She wilfully and vengefully manipulates the situation in a way that foments distrust and bitterness between the 11s and 12s.

While this form of theatre is devoid of 'get it' moments (probably regarded as being too manipulative of the sincere and worshipful theatregoer), I think - on reflection - that the play is suggesting the escalation of hatred and violence is caused by two things: the divide-and-rule tactics of the French administration, and the inevitability of the disempowered, disenfranchised and downtrodden taking their anger out on something relatively innocent.

This is reasonably clear when it comes to the ethnic majority and religious minority, and I suppose one could apply it to the women too, except because they have no 'real' presence in the play, it's just an academic corollary.

It is also interesting to note that those in power seem to be the most angry of all, and although we might have all sorts of theories about that, the play doesn't begin to explore that - perhaps because that would mean humanising the 'baddies' (which most modern dramatisations do so that we can see the potential for evil within ourselves).  

We are left, then, with this steadily rolled-out story punctuated by tales of snakes, hyenas, moons and butterflies, and towards the end someone asks, "Where is the truth?" Exactly.

What seems to start as investigation into one of the more imponderable aspects of human existence drifts on, in its final stretch, to simply dramatise the late life, death and burial of Tierno Bokar, which is somewhat beside the point. It loses sight of it theatrical purpose and wanders back into the biography that inspired it.

Put it this way: when it comes to revitalising ancient tales in the light of today's world, Indian Ink's The Guru of Chai is infinitely more insightful, profound, provocative, enlightening and (therefore) entertaining. And as socio-political and poetic theatre, Juliet O'Brien's The Letter Writer is much more powerful.

The jewel in India's crown

Ravi Shankar with Anoushka Shankar

Michael Fowler Centre, Friday 12, 2010

This beautiful evening of Indian classical music – two sitars, tabla, flute, treble and bass tanpura – will be remembered as one of life's treasures by the delighted capacity audience who gave generous standing ovations.

There can be no doubting the greatness of the occasion. The legendary Ravi Shankar is close to 90 years old, yet brings a joyous and youthful energy to his performance. His genial personality is immediately apparent, and it is clear we are watching an artist whose lifetime's quest – to introduce audiences outside India to the splendid traditions of classical music that his country developed – has made him a happy man.

His striking daughter Anoushka, not yet 30, follows her father's path in command of the instrument, yet has her own fresh spirit and style. Each speaks an introduction to the raga and tala in a brief description that makes the fabulously intricate complexities of this music seem, however fleetingly, accessible and comprehensible. They pay us the compliment of expecting us to trust them, and we do.

Sitar strings make shimmering and cascading poetry, inviting you to dream and float in the tumble of their silver sound. This only happens, of course, because of the unimpeachable technique of the playing. Then there's a climax of thwacking, striking beats that pulls a meditative piece back to a strong and confident conclusion. The drone of tanpura makes a steady background wash, to keep the light and shade of the music in tandem.

The wooden flute, played by Ravichandra Kulur, has a warm and wonderful sonority.

Tabla is played by Tanmoy Bose, with such clear and thrilling dexterity, his hands like hummingbird wings, or soft as water, at times seemingly boneless, moving at speeds that defy belief across beat to half-beat, threading several layers of rhythms together into a weave that would tip and toss and fling away dull care, though soon replacing that with a vitality of pulse and the excitement of sensing your own heart beat.

We are often counselled not to let emotions get the better of us. This music works alchemy, inviting us to do just that. Sheer magic (though not forgetting the thousand, thousand hours of devoted training and practice needed to bring a musician to this point of competence). O India.

11 and 12 travels to New Zealand carrying a lot of cultural baggage. Ironic given that over forty years ago director Peter Brook arguably revolutionised the British stage with the concept of the empty space.

In terms of baggage not only has it taken this time for a Peter Brook production to come here - hence building quite a mystique - there's also this work's long gestation through several other works in Paris, and the fact that it's an English translation of a French adaptation of an African writer Amadou Hampaté Bâ's own autobiographical writing - drawing on the complex politics and spiritual divides of early 20th century French colonial administered Mali.

Then there's the fact that it's all brought to life by a truly multicultural cast. All this might leave you feeling you need to go along to this production very well read and able to nod knowledgeably at appropriate moments.

Not so. Brook's mastery continues to be finding direct, elegant, quiet and simple ways to present complex things. One of 11 and 12's strengths is that it's simple, but not simplistic. It teases out complexities, with theatre playing a storytelling role of providing fables out of detail that rise above life's complications.

Universal truths are revealed from specific circumstances, in this case Ba's own story of being born into a tradition African village, entering brutal French colonial administration, and encountering two remarkable spiritual leaders.

The title of the work comes from a dispute over whether a prayer should be recited eleven or twelve times. This is a dispute that Ba as principal narrator says sees "a bead turn into a bomb". Religious and political war arises from the simplest of dogmatic disagreements.

All the varied cultural elements that construct this work help to emphasise that it is about being able to rise above cultural, spiritual and racial differences to find peace in the world. The work quietly and gently exemplifies in every way its most common action - that expressed in the Christian church in the words "peace be with you".

You may expect, however, a weightier and more significant theatre experience than this work actually provides. 11 and 12 is an unusually understated work in an arts festival programme. At the work's conclusion there was a silence in the auditorium before the applause. I took this to be a sign that the atmosphere had shifted to quiet contemplation. Others have described the work as soporific. My feelings are more mixed.

Yes, the work is small and not particularly emotionally effecting. Ultimately it is too uninvolving. It provides room to muse but there's little time to grow any attachment to the characters as it jumps from one story to the next.

Yet the cast are excellent and there is a beauty in its almost untheatrical - plain but ingenious - presentation, relying on the beautiful use of a few basic props. Then there's the gorgeous unobtrusive live soundscape by Japanese composer Toshi Tsuchitori (who has been with Brook since 1976), employing an arsenal of small instruments.

Being untheatrical isn't a problem with Brook, it's the fact that as a play 11 and 12 is rather undramatic. This is particularly the case in the last half hour, where it feels like the movement of its story has been completed. It's at this point a reverence takes over and the discussion onstage tends to become more internal. I struggled at times to hear the actors with clarity, particularly past the accents of the two great Palestinian actors playing the two Sufi mystics, Makram J. Khoury as Tierno Bokar and Khalifa Natour as Cherif Hamallah.

11 and 12's interest as a piece of writing is in part its polished plainness. Kernels of wisdom, rather than poetic fireworks, shine through, revealing the work's thematic integrity. After one petty incident for example where, abhorring what he sees, Ba must make a choice about continuing to work where he does, he is offered the advise "purity is in the man, not in the place". Thoughts like these ring out.

The production's greatest strength is its internal intellectual integrity, and this translates through to the way the company works together. It is able to be pan-spiritual and pan-global whilst paying respect to different beliefs and not being some wishy-washy hippy melange of beliefs. It is political theatre at its most quiet.

Currently it's fashionable in Europe to dramatize novels, even vast, complex novels that do not rely on dialogue and weave together so many narratives and motifs that it seems impossible to unravel a major strand. One such novel is Amadou Hampaté Bâ's autobiographical "Amkoullel L'Enfant Peul" and I only realized that "11&12", Peter Brook's new production, is based on this memoir when early on the unforgettable story of an African child's fascination with the excrement of the white man is retold (is it white like the skin? or is it, what surprise and delight, as black the excrement of the black boy). Hampaté Bâ, one of West Africa's foremost authors, aimed to merge his personal education sentimentale with a reflection on the multi-facetted traditions and composite cultures of his native Mali, a country as diverse as any in the world, especially in the religious sphere. Animistic elements and Sufi mysticism have formed syncretic local beliefs and rituals that have withstood the pressure of foreign ideology, be it after the Moroccan invasion of 1591, the French colonialism between 1880 and 1960 as well as the more recent Wahhabi presence. Add to this a most lively griot culture (tapestries of oral transmission) and an amazing musical scene, and you can well imagine what wealth of stories and references make up the two volumes of Hampaté Bâ's novel and how difficult it must have been to stage this. Peter Brook has chosen an anecdotal approach, a theatrical version of a tasting session, and he has come up with a décor of beautiful simplicity, three trees and a red cloth that is transformed as the drama requires into a boat or a graveyard. The 75 minutes of the play are interspersed with aphorisms, epigrams and maxims that range from intriguing ("God is the embarrassment of the human mind") and truly wise ("The truth belongs to no one") to the banal and oblique. (However, I do think that the audience in the St. James Theatre was treated to a more profound discourse on religion than the vastly greater number of people that listened at the same time to Richard Dawkins). Also admirable was the beautifully understated music by a Japanese master of many instruments. At the end of the evening one was left with a sense of bewilderment. The reasons for religious conflict and sectarian violence were boiled down to a division over whether to repeat a certain prayer eleven or twelve times, a ridiculously tiny disagreement were it not for the Sufi love of numeric mysticism on one hand and the political and historical battles between the different sects and groups on the other hand that are all but invisible in Peter Brook's play. Thus a production that certainly wanted to highlight an unknown heritage ended up doing it a disservice by omitting most of the context and complexity that would have made the exotic approachable and understandable (the wrong depiction of the Islamic ablution is inexcusable, a simple query would have set things right; Brook repeats the mistakes of Hollywood that never ever gets the Islamic rituals right). As so often in such "multi-cultural" efforts, there is a lot of looking up to and looking down on, but very little looking at the Other.

As a band, Calexico is perfectly named: their music is a road trip to the cinematic imagination. It takes us to Calexico, a sun-bleached crossroads where a fleapit theatre plays Sergio Leone and John Ford westerns on permanent loop. Where the panoramic horizon stares back, sometimes with dread, but mostly with hope. But Calexico's music isn't restricted to the familiar, like an indie-rock version of Ennio Morricone. It takes any route that looks promising.

From Tucson, Arizona, and almost constantly on the road, Calexico get back to where they once belonged, in their dreams. To Mexican weddings, border crossings, town squares where grandparents oversee untamed children. Then there will be a sudden, unexpected detour, and that low-stringed electric guitar switches stations from El Paso to indie rock FM. Whereas Los Lobos never forget their R&B roots, Calexico reveal a student band's cerebral self-consciousness.

A seven-piece, the band is still dominated by the two men who founded the group in 1990. Joey Burns takes the stage first, opening delicately with 'Bisbee Blue': just his Spanish nylon-stringed guitar, supported by Paul Niehaus's unshowy pedal steel. While Burns is the earnest frontman, as the evening progresses it's apparent that the backbone of the group is its drummer and co-founder, John Convertino.

He is that rarity, a discreet drummer and expert backseat driver, controlling the shifts from festive dances to moody epics, never overplaying his hand.

Calexico's point-of-difference is its celebration of Mexican-American flavours, in particular the mariachi trumpets from Martin Wenk and Jacob Valenzuela. Especially effective in syncopation with Convertino, the shrill horns emphasise the Latin rhythms, and create a party atmosphere hampered by the tiered, cramped seating of the makeshift Pacific Blue "club". For the band is playing to the converted, and it is their instrumentals that get the best reaction. Guitar twangs and big-echo whistling, whip-cracks and rodeo yelps: so many cultural touchstones, conjured by musical triggers.

The more Calexico select from their Mexican musical menu, the richer the rewards. They almost transport us from our straightjacket seats, on a bleak Wellington evening, to a public party in the noonday sun.

The Arrival, by Shaun Tan, created by Kate Parker and Julie Nolan

directed Julie Nolan

Opera House, until March 14

Every immigrant's nightmare: arriving in a new country faced with a strange new language, people and customs and the highs and lows of dealing with all this strangeness.

As the title suggests, this is  exactly what Red Leap Theatre's production of The Arrival is all about. This is no harrowing story of a refugee family but a tale of one man's journey told in one of the most imaginative and innovative ways seen in a long while.

Beased on a book of the same name by Australian writer Shaun Tan, it not only recreates Tan's story but the creators of this show, Kate Parker and Julie Nolan, also emulate the surreal, dream-like imagery that he uses to illustrate his book.

It's a simple story of hope and fortitude overcoming hardship and insurmountable odds. A man leaves his wife and daughter for a better life in a faraway country so that one day they can join him and prosper from his new-found life.

Travelling across the ocean, he eventually arrives in this strange new world where he doesn't speak the language and where everything is unfamiliar. He has to relearn the basics of day-to-day living in an alien culture, with little or no help from those around him. Eventually, he succeeds in settling in and is reunited with his family.

From the moment the wonderfully 3D-like set of John Verryt unfolds, it is obvious that this is going to be an enthralling and magical journey. Almost wordless, the production use creatively choreographed movement and an amazing array of puppets, flying birds and ships, a mouse-like dog and many other objects, to tell the story. The originality of expressing the difficulty he has in dealing with everyday things is totally absorbing.

At times funny and at others poignantly emotional, greatly aided by Andrew McMillan's evocative soundscape, this childlike presentation, which is far from childish, captivates its audience from start to finish. The ensemble playing of the cast is excellent, not only in their energy and physicality but in the way they assist the transition of set and props from scene to scene seamlessly.

This New Zealand production has gained many accoladtes across the Tasman since its premiere in Auckland a year ago, and rightly so.

And like Apollo 13: Mission Control, it is equal to and in some cases better than overseas productions.

Amanda Fisher

A journey into the nebulous area between fiction and non-fiction is what awaited those at an audience with creative non-fiction authors Geoff Dyer and Philip Hoare in Writers and Readers Week.

The two British authors yesterday sounded like they were singing from the same song book for most of their conversation with New Zealand biographer Harry Ricketts at the Embassy Theatre, detailing similar journeys into their careers and practically identical philosophies on writing.

One thing that didn't match up was the authors' daily routines - Dyer labelling Hoare a "weirdo" for his detailed, compulsive daily routine, which starts at 5.30am and ends at 8.30pm (except on Christmas Day).

Both writers were taken with World War I, which inspired Dyer's The Missing of the Somme and Hoare's Wilde's Last Stand about collective memory of the war and its legacy.

"The thing (about the First World War is that it's so present, it"s nevery gone away," Dyer said.

"I think I'm particularly interested in places where time has stood its ground ... where the temporal is expressed in the geographical, where history becomes geography."

Hoare was fasciniated by the memories of the war which have left behind the ilegal clubs, drugs and transvestites which cropped up.

Dyer noted the similarities between himself and Hoare.

"I see us both as amateurs really.

"The academic route is encouraging you always toward greater and greater specialisation and (Philip) and I have just gone the other way."

both Hoare and Dyer have covered a vast range of subjects, from war to photography, the Victorian era to jazz, whales to travel.

"We have really needed to avoid any specialisation."

But that wasn't meant to sound ungrateful - "Although I'm not doing it, I'm very dependent on the labours of experts and specialists," Dyer said.

After two biographies, Hoare broke away from the form to play fast and loose with non-fiction. The technique earned praise from WG Sebald - the very writer who inspired it.

"After that I felt completely free to do what I wanted and that's really affected everything I have written since."

For two authors proud of their chronological accounts of history and novel book structures, it is fitting to leave their similar induction into writing untl last.

Dyer labels himself a "beneficiary of a particular historical moment", which began after he completed his university education in 1980 in London.

"I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to sign on for the dole."

Both Dyer and Hoare - who finished university the year before in 1979 - were coming of age in Thaterite Britain, when unemployment rates were high but the social welfare state was intact.

"The dole supported a whole generation of writers, artists, dancers."

My favourite message to theatre goers to switch off their mobile phones is at London's Festival Hall, where Gandalf himself, the fruity voice of Sir Iain McKellen, urges you to make sure yours is off. That's hard to beat and virtually worth the price of admission.

But Shaun Parker has a pretty cute way of doing it too: Larry, or at least the first guy we meet out of a troupe of likeably real dancers, just draws a phone on the huge blackboard wall of the set and then crosses it out. Simple. Then he draws a switch and activates the lighting and the show gets underway.

When I say likeably real I mean they come in all shapes sizes and colours and some of them are better dancers than others. Some have great fluidity, some are athletic, and some are just part of the pack. This is not a show about virtuosity, although there are a couple of outstanding solos and duets. It's more about dynamics, energy, playfulness and an engagement with the physical and how that makes us happy.It's the kind of happiness that is within reach of everyone, whether they are doing a morning stretch or surfing.

The program notes suggest distinctions between nine distinct personality types but I have to say that eluded me almost completely. I don't think they were sharply defined enough to identify; some shifted in an out of extrovert and introvert moods, but any deeper resonances or subtleties of character remained opaque .

So there's not much by way of idea , and certainly no narrative thread, just a series of moments loosely sewn together. Looseness of limb is one of the most appealing aspects of the show, and a certain innocent freshness, punctuated with something you don't see very often in the world of contemporary dance - smiles! Most serious choreographers prefer the face to be a blank canvas, as if the dancer felt no emotion and were moving almost like a machine, but these dancers remind us all the time that they- and we - are human. There's a charming trio of girls who go through a series of moves while laughing. Never seen that before. It's a perfect demonstration of the completely uncynical tone of this piece. There's also a lovely tender moment when a pratfalling rollerskater finds his balance and rhythm in an embrace which elegantly co- ordinates two sets of legs moving in time like oiled pistons of an engine.

Uncomplicated, vital, with moments of originality and humour, Happy as Larry is likeable though perhaps ten minutes longer than it needs to be.

Calexico

Pacific Blue Festival  Club, Thursday and Friday 11 & 12 March

Arizona-based alt-country ensemble Calexico was formed around the talents of songwriters Joey Burns (vocals, guitar) and John Convertino (drums): a floating cast fleshing out the live performances.

To call them an Americana group means stretching the definition to embrace mariachi-styled horn parps, searing slide and pedal-steel guitars, accordions and vibraphone. All of this is added, seamlessly, to the more obvious sounds of upright bass, accoustic and electric guitars and drum kit.

With six albums in a decade and a half, Calexico have moved from a darker folk music to bright, cascading world music; their most recent album, Carried To Dust, is an attempt to rekindle the magic of their near-perfect run between 1998 and 2004. It's a stronger collection than 2006"s misstep, Garden Ruin, but not quite up there with 2000's Hot Rail and 2003's Feast Of Wire.

Burns opens the show, accompanied by the steel guitar of Paul Niehaus. From there the full seven-piece band launched into the live staple, Quattro.

And it's obvious, instantly, that the magic of Calexico is in hearing the blend of all the parts. At times when the spotlight is focused on one instrument, whether trumpet, vibes or guitar, as good as the playing is, it can feel amost like a showband doing the runs. FAr more successful is when the ensemble works at the songs, which tumble from Burns' guitar strings and spill across Convertion's cymbals and toms. A waft of trumpet, a stab of steel guitar, the nodding double-bass peeking in between the spaces: this is what gives Claexico's music the overt cinmeatic feel - the wash of sounds combining so effortlessly to always feel both perfectly structured and ever-so-slightly improvised; the songs falling away, elegantly, at the end.

Two Silver Trees is a highlight from the new album. Again it is in the way the instrumental parts segue, diving off and away - it works every time. It gives the feeling of so many things being thrown at the canvas but there is no blurring of the colours, rather a subtle melding.

The Feast Of Wire tracks are highlights, most often, from Dub Latina to the encore of Not Even Stevie Nicks.

The rousing final encore, a brilliant cover of Love's Alone Again Or, is still the best song in this group's repertoire. It is the perfect showcase for everything brilliant this band does: punchy arrangements, smart, flowing, full of ideas - and the actual playing is often simple.

They have at least half a dozen brilliant songs of their own, too. And we got to hear them. Fans were happy. No reason not to be.