These cold nights are drawing in. Winter Is Coming, as
the Stark family would have it. Wellington, however, seems to be ignoring the
usual cycle of the seasons, and whilst the mornings are getting darker and the
days shorter, the temperatures are remaining in the twenties (“hot” for
Wellington, “where’s my cardie?” for West Islanders).
With the changing of the season comes more indoor
activities, and we have a veritable feast of comedy, theatre and music coming
up. Also, we have a mere 71 days in which to use up our Entertainment
subscription, so a few tasty dinners are on the cards as well.
First cab off the rank is Dawn French, with her show
Thirty Million Minutes. And first dinner is at Shed 5 – the fish restaurant
formerly owned by world-famous-in-New-Zealand chef Simon Gault. We’ve been
there a few times before, and always had good food. It’s now in the hands of Alfredo Icedo Romero, and the food is still
great. The emphasis is on fresh fish and seafood, all of which is filleted
in-house.
We took a leisurely stroll down to the Opera House for
the show, which started at 8pm. It’s called Thirty Million Minutes, which is
approximately how long she has been alive – at least when she began the tour,
in 2014 (it takes a little while to get all the way around the other side of
the world). She makes references to the number of million minutes at various
stages of her, and some other people’s lives, when significant events happen.
The show is not really a stand-up comedy show. For a
start, she sits down for a lot of it. It’s more of a one-woman show,
autobiographical in content. Of course, a lot of it is funny in an anecdotal
way, but some parts of it a very sad and serious, when she talks about the
deaths of grandparents and parents. But then there were some seriously funny
bits, as she explains the difference between good granny and evil granny, and
how, being English, she’d rather bleed to death in the bathtub than call the
doctor and spoil his evening.
