Much Ado About Nothing

After a final day’s birding and lunching in Waiheke, we headed back to Auckland on the car ferry, and straight to the Pop-Up Globe at Ellerslie for our final dose of Shakespeare. Sattie gave us an option to “avoid stationary traffic” at one point. Well, that’s got to be worth doing, hasn’t it? Speed up our journey? No. She took us to a junction that was impossible to exit in the direction we wanted to go. In theory it looked OK, but the weight of Auckland traffic at 5pm prevented us getting out. So we went around again and tried a different route. But the “avoid stationary traffic” option was still on, apparently, so Sattie took us all around the houses to get to our destination. Probably added 15 minutes to our journey, whilst saving us a couple of minutes being stationary. Stoopid Sattie.

Anyway, we still arrived in plenty of time for Much Ado About Nothing, and got ourselves victualled, before again taking our seats in the middle row. Nicola opted to go and be a groundling for the first half. Unsurprisingly, many of the cast were the same as in Romeo and Juliet, including Hero for Juliet. She didn’t screech quite so much in this outing, which was a relief. There was also someone famous off the telly, and someone from Neighbours (yes, I know that’s off the telly as well). Generally it was a pretty good production. With no blood and gore to spray the groundlings with, they resorted to spilled or thrown drinks.

At the end we drove off to our airport hotel (actually 3km from the airport, but that’s the way they arrange these things). That’s the end of our Shakespeare adventures for the time being because, after four seasons in Auckland, they’re not going to be there next year. So we’re going to give Waiheke a break, and maybe try Great Barrier Island next year.

Two of our other regular Wellington gigs are also missing this year: Summer Sci-Fi have decided to take a break for a year, and Wellington Summer Shakespeare, who normally perform in the great outdoors, have taken the mysterious decision to perform indoors this year. And it’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – a play which is probably most apt to be performed outdoors. Essemaitch.