Tim Minchin

Tim Minchin is Back. That’s the name of his new tour, which contains “old songs, new songs, fuck you songs” according to his publicity. He’s not toured for seven years (we last saw him in the UK) so when this was announced, I was all over it like a rash. Possibly too rash-like, it turns out, because we were allocated seats in the second row of the stalls, so we were looking up to the stage.

First, though, we have to stuff our fat faces, as is tradition. On this occasion, with an 8pm start, we could take our time over dinner, and so decided to revisit the scene of many a lunch and dinner in the past, Wellington’s finest, Logan Brown. At one time I was visiting this establishment so regularly that I started calling it the staff canteen. As it is, we’ve not actually been here for a while, so it’s always worth checking out whether it’s still Wellington’s finest. You’ll be relieved to hear that it is.

We then walked along to the Michael Fowler Centre, which we’d managed to park nearby earlier (all the better for a quick getaway), and bumped into one of Nicola’s chorus colleagues. Then we took our seats, discovering quite how close to the stage we were. There’d been a delay with opening the doors to the general public, and so the show started about ten minutes late. What was the problem? Tim explained: “Apparently, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra has been in here today, rehearsing. Making me late! Fuckers!”

The stage set was quite simple, with a black backdrop and his piano in front of it. He gave us a couple of songs, Plane Goes Down and F Sharp, and told us how he loved us more than his kids. “They never cheer when I come into a room!”, gave us some interesting facts about statistics and bell curves, and was generally funny. A few songs in and he’s doing Rock & Roll Nerd, a song about wanting to be in a rock band, and failing, when the backdrop falls down, there’s banging of drums and the squeal of guitars, and behind the backdrop there’s…a rock band! Wow! How cool is that? So he plays the rest of the song with an actual rock band, who then provide backing for the rest of the show.

The rest of the set contained songs as advertised, including a 8½ minute rock opera dedicated to cheese, Woody Allen Jesus (with audience participation), and other songs old, new and fuck-you. There was Leaving LA, a song about leaving LA (no shit, Sherlock!), which he introduced as “the very definition of white privilege: writing a song whining about how your $100 million singing cartoon film project has been cancelled”. Interspersed, as always, with his comments on life in general, his family, and other comedic targets. Go see if you get the chance!

The Children

Circa Theatre’s main offering for April is The Children, a play which opened at the Royal Court Theatre in 2017, and has now been produced in New Zealand. The play centres on three people dealing with the aftermath of a nuclear disaster caused by a tsunami, in a reflection of the 2011 Japanese Fukushima tsunami. All three actors are veterans of New Zealand’s screen and stage, and we’ve seen them many times both at Circa and on TV and film, including The Hobbit.  

As it was an early show, we decided to have a glass of wine at Noble Rot beforehand, and dine afterwards. Noble Rot is Wellington’s premiere wine bar (admittedly, from a pretty small field – most of the wine bars of yore have shut up shop) but they are only open of an evening, so when we’re usually in the area (Cuba Street) we’re looking for lunch, so don’t get there much. We took advantage of their early evening opening, and then walked along to Circa for the show.

There’s been a tsunami. The nuclear power station has been damaged, and the surrounding area contaminated. Two of the physicists who worked there have left their home inside the exclusion zone, and decamped to a cottage just outside the irradiated area, where they live a simple life of organic vegetables and compost toilets. A former colleague, Rose, turns up, and they start talking, and arguing about, what, if anything, they should be doing as a consequence. A lot of the past is dug up and raked over, and newer things also come up. In the end, a kind of decision is reached, and we all go home somewhat more enlightened than when we arrived. It’s powerfully done, not least because it’s so understated.

Afterwards we decided to give Pico Bar & Eatery another try, as it’s very conveniently located. I tried their burger this time, which was competently executed, and Nicola had the gnocchi. Again, these were done well, but I can’t help feeling that this place is now a shadow of its former self. Hopefully they’ll bring their 'A' game when WOAP starts in a few months.

Fringe Frolics

The Wellington Fringe festival has been upon us – from the 1^st to 23^rd March – and we’ve been to see a few things. Nicola has also been helping out with the organisation, by taking tickets, payments and generally pointing people in the right direction. Like fringe festivals everywhere, the standard of the material can be variable, but we were mostly entertained by the shows we went to see. One of the performers we wanted to see, Tessa Waters, was cancelled, for unspecified reasons. Hopefully she’ll be back in the comedy festival later in the year.

2 Ruby Knockers, 1 Jaded Dick

This is a one-man show by Tim Motley as Dirk Darrow, a hard-boiled private dick in the style of Marlowe or Hammer, with a good line in bad jokes. He also does magic, starting the show by asking us to answer some questions on a card, and then cold reading people in the audience to see if he’s got it right. He plays all the characters in the mystery of Ruby Knockers, a bank robbery and a murder; it’s all interspersed with card tricks, bad puns, a misfiring gun, and real, genuine, magic at the end. We were rolling, and sometimes groaning, in the aisles. Definitely one to watch – he’s been hawking this and other shows in the same vein around the fringe circuit since 2014, but this is his first time in New Zealand. Hopefully he’ll come back.

The Mournmoor Murders

This is a two-hander performed by Alice May Connolly and Maria Williams, at BATS theatre’s Studio. They play all the characters in a mash-up between Midsomer Murders and New Zealand’s own Brokenwood Mysteries. There’s been a murder in Mournmoor, and two detectives from the Big City (Timaru) are sent to investigate. Cultural references abound as the bodies pile up, but, incredibly, they managed to miss out saying “there’s more ‘n’ more murders happening”. This was more miss than hit, as they only seemed to have one volume (high) and one emotion (histrionic), which got a bit wearing after a while. All their mates from drama school were in the audience with them, giggling at them even when they weren’t trying to be funny. Good concept, poor execution.

The Man Who Was Thursday

A classic GK Chesterton story, performed by one man in the form of Peter Coates, this follows the investigation and infiltration of the Organisers Of Anarchy, an anarchist organisation. There’s poetry, anarchy, cross and doublecross, and characters named after days of the week. What’s not to like? It shows what you can do when you have a decent script to work with, and Coates plays all the characters convincingly.  Good fun.

How To Win A Pub Quiz

This is a one-man comedy show, where Alex Love demonstrates how to win at pub quiz. Spoiler alert: the trick is to remember facts and information. He then gave us some facts, including a recitation of the fifty states of the USA in alphabetical order, followed up by the periodic table: “gold, silver, copper, tin, aluminium…and all the others”. Easy. He also demonstrated the use of his “fact bell”, which he rang every time there was a genuine fact. He then got us into teams (we were joined by the lady sat next to us, Jackie), and we did a pub quiz. Some of the questions were hard, and he did set out to trick us a bit. One of his techniques was to deduct points from teams for bad behaviour, answering back etc. – there was a rather rambunctious team in the front row who started the quiz on a score of -4. The audience were encouraged to assist this with a chant of “Take one off! Take one off!” if anyone was misbehaving. We finished a creditable third equal (out of around 20 teams), let down by our lack of knowledge about Smurfs and S Club 7 songs.

Black Caps vs. Bangladesh

As the cricket season draws to a close, one final test series is being played in New Zealand. Bangladesh are here for a three-test series, and played the first test in Hamilton. As you may have heard, South Africa’s loss to Sri Lanka has helped New Zealand move up the test cricket rankings, and at the beginning of this series they’d grabbed the no. 2 slot, behind India. By a precarious two points, in the way that world rankings are calculated, but still…a test series win, even against lowly Bangladesh, would help to cement that ranking.

And so it was that New Zealand, after bowling out Bangladesh in the first innings for 234, put on what may possibly be their greatest display of batting ever. With three centuries, from Raval, Latham and Williamson (200 not out), they eventually declared at 715 for 6; setting the visitors a mountain to climb – 481 just to get New Zealand to bat again. They made a valiant effort, but fell short by 52 runs, and lost to an innings defeat.

Test two was in Wellington, and kicked off on Friday. When it rained all day. Really rained. Saturday wasn’t quite as rainy, just on and off drizzle, but with the pitch already waterlogged, the chances of play faded as the afternoon progressed.

What to do? A five-day test had been reduced to three by the time Sunday dawned, and even then the weather was looking iffy. Having won the toss, New Zealand again decided to bowl at Bangladesh, and skittled them for 211 in 61 overs. A good start, but then Bangladesh took revenge on the Black Caps openers, taking them out for 3 and 4, and New Zealand finished the day on a somewhat dodgy 38 for 2. On Day 4, however, New Zealand really let fly, and with another double ton, this time from Taylor, complemented by a century from Nicholls, they quickly amassed a defendable total, and declared at 432/6, giving themselves 23 overs to bowl at Bangladesh before the close of play. They used this to good effect, taking three wickets, and left Bangladesh on a precarious 80/3.

We decided to go along for the final day’s play, starting early again at 10:30 to try to recover some of the lost ground from the two-day wash-out. Bangladesh needed 141 to make New Zealand bat again. Once again, the weather forecast looked doubtful early doors, and there was a possibility the match could go either way, or end as a draw, depending on the conditions. Bangladesh were certainly batting well, but the wickets fell regularly. Captain Mahmudullah tried to hold it together with the tail, but when he was out for 97 the match was only going one way, and the threatened interruptions had failed to materialise as the clouds broke and the day improved. New Zealand asked for, and got, a 15-minute extension to the first session before lunch in an attempt to wrap the game up, which they promptly did, taking down the last three wickets with ease. They won by an innings and 12 runs; also taking the series 2-0 with one more match to play in Christchurch, confirming their ranking as the second-best test team in the world.

Side By Side By Sondheim

Circa Theatre’s flagship musical offering for late summer is a celebration of Sondheim’s musicals, with songs from many of his shows. We thought we’d give it a whirl.

First, however, we decided to try the phoenix that has risen from the ashes that were Zibibbo – a new restaurant on the same site called Pico Bar And Eatery. It was supposed to open on Wednesday, but they’d been delayed a day, so they informed us. As we crossed their threshold they told us that we were, in fact, their very first diners! We’d been pretty much the last out of Zibibbo, too, thanks to winning a competition to dine there on Christmas day, before it finally shut its doors on 31^st December. So what’s changed? Well, it’s now a more casual eatery, with the so-last-year “sharing plates” concept. We ordered four plates from the available selection of six. Two of them involve potatoes, so you really only want one of those, which somewhat limits the rest of your choices. The food was good, and we went on to have desserts as well, but my feeling is that they’re going to have to change up the menu pretty regularly if they want us to keep going there. We’ll see how it evolves (as I’m sure it must), and also what they offer during WOAP, but my first impression isn’t 100% favourable.

Then we crossed the road to Sondheim, in what appeared to a sell-out night. Many’s the night been when we’ve sat in one section of the seats in Circa with only the first few rows occupied, but this appeared to be a popular choice.

The set was pretty bare, apart from two pianos, with just some incidental seating and furniture to lounge on. There were three singers – one man and two women. They talked us through the songs they were singing, giving biographical and historical details about the show they were from, and generally filling in the gaps with chat. The singing was excellent, and included some songs that had been cut from the original shows, as well as popular crowd-pleasers like Send In The Clowns. Follies and Company dominated the schedule, with smatterings from other shows including A Little Night Music and Gypsy: A Musical Fable.

Bryan Ferry

Bryan Ferry, erstwhile singer of Roxy Music and long-time solo artist, is touring the antipodes at the moment. Unlike many an artist, upon whose heads I metaphorically heap copious amounts of ordure, he has noticed that Wellington is part of New Zealand, and has created a tour schedule accordingly. Yes, he came to Wellington.

We drove into town, having uncharacteristically failed to pre-book a dinner venue. “We’ll be able to pick something up easily on a Tuesday night” I thought. First, we tried Crab Shack. The maître-d’ was taking phone numbers to call people when their tables would be ready. “No matter, we’ll pop next door – Shed 5 didn’t look as busy.” Nope, fully booked. “Let’s try Foxglove then.” The restaurant was fully booked, “…but you can have food from the bar snacks menu.” We had a quick look at that, spotted that burgers were a key component of said menu, and ordered.

What’s going on? Well, you have to think of the Bryan Ferry concert-going demographic. Mostly our age, or older, and generally people of wealth and taste, who’d already spaffed a three-figure sum on tickets. And what do such people do before a gig? Why, take in a leisurely dinner. The barman at Foxglove was equally puzzled as to why the average age of his customers had suddenly skyrocketed. “Is there a concert on?” he asked. “Yes, Bryan Ferry”, I replied. “Who?” “Bryan Ferry. You know, from Roxy Music.” “Who?” Bless him, he wasn’t even a twinkle in his parents’ eyes when Roxy Music were in their heyday. His granddad was probably in the audience. And, when we looked around the crowd during the interval between sets, there weren’t many faces under forty to be seen.

Having consumed our burgers, we walked over to the TSB Arena, and staked our place at the Row E, seat 56 and 57 bar. The support act, who appeared to have been drafted in at very short notice, were The Miltones. Actually The Mil, or possibly The Nes, as there were only two of the five band members. They performed their songs competently enough, but in a rather one-dimensional way as they were missing most of their instrumentation.

Some of The Miltones

And then, Bryan Ferry. Now, we’ve been rather spoilt lately by David Byrne’s recent performance, so the idea of a band, playing their songs, whilst standing on a stage, seems almost quaint. And yet, that is what they did. Mr Ferry sometimes stood, sometimes sat at a keyboard, and was assisted by a band of eight, including Chris Spedding on guitar, a musician who has had a long-standing association with Ferry and RM since the seventies. Yes, that Chris Spedding. He also had a viola player, sax, keyboardist, bass, drummer, and backing singers. They belted out a selection of songs old and new – mostly old, in fact, with a good choice of RM tunes, most of which I was unfamiliar with. Unlike certain bands I could mention, he wasn’t just playing golden oldies hits, but choosing with care from his extensive back catalogue. He mixed in the occasional big hit to keep us interested, then finished up with Jealous Guy. They didn’t do the usual encore routine whereby the band leave the stage, there’s much whooping and whistling, and then they reappear – Ferry had left whilst the band finished up the long instrumental outro, then reappeared to perform a belting version of Let’s Stick Together. The house lights came up immediately after that, indicating that there was no more to come.

Measure For Measure

We stayed on Waiheke for a further two days. We’d been down to Blackpool beach at the bottom of our street in search of shore birds, but they were being rather uncooperative – standing around on a patch of grass instead of posing more picturesquely by the sea. Undeterred, we set out further afield in search of Whakanewha Regional Reserve, where we’d been told there might be better prospects. Indeed, we found them, in the form of New Zealand dotterels and variable oystercatchers aplenty. We also managed a substantial walk around a loop track, and did a bit of the Dottie Track where we saw banded rails.

New Zealand dotterel

Variable oystercatchers, demonstrating variability

Banded rail

We lunched in Surfdale at Found, which, despite running out of halloumi, nevertheless managed to provide us with some decent nosh.

The following day we were back out on the wine trail – this time to Cable Bay wines, where we were welcomed by Jamie, a Canadian who was on a working visa for a year and had previously worked at Noble Rot in Wellington, so we chatted to her about Wellington and wine, whilst tasting her wares. Then we headed over to the other side of the island, to Waiheke’s most-awarded winery, Passage Rock. Again we had a good talk, with the owner and winemaker, David. We’d decided to stop there for lunch, as they also have an exceptional bistro attached, and had salmon and escargots.

In the afternoon we revisited the cultural centre to see Whittaker's Music Museum, where we learnt about pianos and other musical instruments, some of which could be played, others were "Do Not Touch". They'd been collected over a lifetime by Lloyd Whittaker

In the evening we drove out to 372 in Onetangi for our final meal on the island. Having been so impressed by them a couple of days ago at lunchtime, we decided to give them the pleasure of our company again, and they did us proud – I had the salmon tiradito that Nicola had had previously, followed by a slow-cooked lamb shoulder, and Nicola had shiitake dumplings followed by fish of the day. All delicious, and definitely gets my recommendation!

We were up early the next day to catch the ferry to Auckland, and, after dropping off our bags and rental car, headed into Auckland CBD for some lunch. Once again we were making lunch the main meal of the day as we would be at the Globe in the evening, so had burgers at Danny Doolan’s, an entirely inauthentic Irish pub. So inauthentic it didn’t even have a bicycle on the wall, which I understood was mandatory for Irish pubs.

In the evening, it pissed down. We started out towards the Globe on foot, but were eventually defeated by the weather so finished the journey by taxi, arriving in the nick of time and unfed. We managed to procure some food in the interval – chips and wine, two of the main food groups.

Despite the weather, the show must go on. The groundlings were equipped with rain ponchos and similar, and it was noticeable that the actors stayed away from the edge of the stage, which was exposed to the elements, unless forced to (at some points they have to descend the steps at the front and exit via the crowd). Occasionally the swirling wind gusted some rain at us, but for the most part we stayed dry. The play itself was well-executed, although as with all Shakespeare comedies, the convoluted plot leaves you thinking “why bother with all that?”. But they pulled it off with much comic effect, throwing in some more modern touches again – such as having wheelie suitcases to indicate that they were going on a journey. Elbow, the policeman, was dressed in completely modern police garb, whilst the other characters where in mostly period costume.

So that’s our Pop-Up Globe adventure for this year…we will probably make this an annual fixture for as long as they continue to offer it. The following morning it was back to Wellington and more wet weather.