The Artist

Circa Theatre has reopened, and their first show is a short season (four nights) of a one-man show that was interrupted by the covids, called The Artist. It features Thom Monckton as the eponymous…er…eponym. We took our first opportunity to get some actual culture under our belts, and headed out on Thursday night.

The show was at 6:30pm, so we decided to have dinner later, and therefore parked up the Cuba Street end of town in order to be able to make a quick getaway after dinner. The show has been moved into the main theatre, but was sold as General Admission, so it was a bit of a scramble to get the good seats. However, we found places about halfway back, with good sight of the stage (there aren’t any *bad* seats, but some of them are a bit sideways-on). 

At 6:30 the lights dimmed, and The Artist, who had been on stage whilst people came in, showed us what he’d been working on as we took our seats – which brought the first laugh of the evening. Yes, this is comedy, physical comedy and sight gags mixed up with mime. There’s no actual words apart from some mutterings about “banana, banana”, “nyet banana” when the apple and pear try to get into the banana nightclub. I know, it makes no sense. You had to be there. During the course of the show, some paintings are painted, some are assembled, and one is completed (spoiler alert!) by a member of the audience. At the end of the show he assembled all the various paintings on stage, and took a final drink of wine and a bow. It was all good fun, with some laugh-out-loud moments.

Afterwards, we headed up Cuba Street to dine at Loggy B’s, as we call it. We haven’t been there in a while, but have been cooking their Logan Brown At Yours meals, delivered by Steve Logan, during the lockdown. Steve was on hand to greet people as we entered the restaurant so we were able to have a quick chat, tell him how much we’d enjoyed LBAY, before settling down to dinner. The format here has changed slightly as they get back into the swing of things, with the menu offering a three-course meal for a fixed price of $70. We started off with a cocktail – French martini for me – then had pāua ravioli (their signature dish), cured salmon, gnocchi, venison, and finished up with panna cotta and chocolate cremeux. Yup, they’re still the best.

That was our first “proper” night out…more to follow!