Cuba Dupa

Wellington’s biggest street festival is back, bigger and better than ever before. We’ve not been for a while, and during la pandemia it was obviously a no-go. The festival is dance, music, street theatre, parades, and food, with various stages and areas set up for performance as well as the more mobile events. It starts on a Friday night, and on Saturday goes on late into the night, finally winding up on Sunday early evening.

As we’d volunteered for the Fringe Festival, we’d also signed up for Cuba Dupa. This involved two shifts for me, and one for Nicola (because orchestra on Saturday). Fortunately the weather was good – it being early autumn now, the weather can be a bit chancy – and whilst it was breezy on the Saturday, this didn’t seem to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm.

My first shift was helping out at the information stand on Cuba Street (there was another stand a little further away on Leeds Street car park), which also sold merchandise. The merch this year consisted of second-hand t-shirts, being recycled with a Cuba Dupa logo: these were either pre-printed, or you could select your own shirt and have a different design printed on them on the spot. This proved to be quite a popular option. Other items on sale were tote bags and reusable cups – a lot of the people who were attending, particularly into the night, were bar-hopping down Cuba Street to various venues and events. I was also able to watch the parades that went past during my shift, including a Bollywood-style dancing troupe.

My second shift on Sunday was a bit more tedious – managing the Green Rooms at Te Auaha. There were far fewer performances on Sunday, so in fact there were only three groups on during my shift – a wind and brass band and two dancing groups. They didn’t require much from me so most of my time was spent trying to find somewhere comfortable to seat and while away the hours, and directing people to the toilets.

After each shift I went on a bit of a stroll to get some pics to try to capture the atmosphere.

The King Of Taking

We’re back into the swing of things at Circa, with more and more shows that we want to see after the summer hiatus (pantomimes and kids’ stuff, chiefly). Also, Nicola has more shifts as an usher coming up so there’ll be plenty more opportunities to see things.

The King Of Taking stars Thom Monckton, who we previously saw as The Artist. It’s physical comedy, mime, and acrobatics all rolled into one. The King requests that his subjects (the audience) bring a present for him, and various audience members did so – these are revealed as a pile on a table later in the show. Bringing a gift also entitles you to a discount on the ticket price.

The King appears on stage. His first task is to sit on his throne, which takes him quite a while. He eventually achieves this in unorthodox fashion. Next, he needs to get to the presents. For some reason, his feet mustn’t touch the floor, so a series of rolled-up red carpets is used to eventually effect his access to the table where the presents are displayed. Along the way, he summons various assistants – in fact, his insistent called of ”Jonathan!”, followed by several others (none of whom actually appear) is the only real monologue throughout. The King is clearly displeased with their lack of ability, and instructs Katherine (also invisible) to execute them all by bow and arrow, then dispose of the bodies in the crocodile-infested castle moat.

Once the king finally arrives at the gift-laden table, he is able to open all the presents. I suspect that the first one is a deliberate plant, but after that they seem to be genuinely random gifts, and he has to improvise his surprise, delight, or disappointment to each one. It’s all good fun, and he is the master of expressiveness – just one look or expression can speak volumes. He’s only on for a week so the show’s been and gone already, but hopefully he’ll be back with more at a later date.

As it was an early show, we booked dinner afterwards, at Highwater. This is a restaurant at the lower end of Cuba Street, in what used to be a scuzzy, low-rent desert. The area has undergone a bit of a face-lift, and Highwater is part of what attracts people there. Last time I tried they were full, so this time I booked well in advance. The food is the shared plates model, but the plates were pretty good. I started with some oysters (unfortunately not Bluff but Waiheke Pacific, but pretty good all the same); then we shared dishes of salumi, spinach & dill pancakes, albacore crudo, endive salad and grilled wagyu flank. All done to a very high standard – I think this will become a regular, also given its location near Michael Fowler Centre and Circa.

 

 

The Chocolate Diet

Crikey, do we ever stay in of an evening? There’s been a run of things on over that last week, and it’s not going to let up much next week either. On Saturday night we headed into town to watch David Strassman’s latest show, The Chocolate Diet. Remember David Strassman? We last saw him in 2017, with his iTedE Talk show.

 First things first…a quick perusal of my previous blog reveals that we went to Zibibbo for pre-theatre dinner back then. Sadly, Zibibbo is no more, so we went to another of our current crop of pre-theatre faves, Field & Green, there to dine on salmon mousse, leeks & fennel, soufflé, and hraimi – a Jewish spiced fish dish with chickpeas. All up to the required standard. We finished with their famous home-made ice creams…I really must venture away from my usuals (peanut butter and chocolate, and chocolate honeycomb) and try something different next time. Nicola swears by the marmalade flavour (“it’s bloody good!”).

We were at the Opera House for this show, but fortunately in the stalls rather than up in the gods as we were for Rob Brydon the other day. In case I haven’t mentioned it, Strassman is a ventriloquist. He has a range of characters, who he introduces at various stages of the show. The main one is Ted E Bare, and he kicks off with him, explaining his love of eating chocolate, and the effects that this is having on his body. Later in the show, after Chuck Wood has given Ted some chocolate (that he got from the pharmacy), Ted reappears after having catastrophically lost weight. Chuck Wood is a foulmouthed teenager, who often insults the other characters, Strassman, and the audience – he has no filter. Other characters who appear are Buttons, the drunken clown; Sid Beaverman, a beaver who aspires to stand-up comedy (unfortunately, his jokes are awful); Grandpa Fred, Ted’s grandfather, who has lost most of his marbles; and Kevin the Alien. Each of these gets an outing, but Ted remains the main star – despite Chuck’s attempts to derail the show and make himself the main act.

It's all great fun, very well written and delivered, and no, you can’t see his lips move.

Fringe Frolics

Nicola and I have both been volunteering at the Wellington Fringe Festival, which has been taking place between 17 February and 11 March. What does this involve? Helping with ticketing, mainly. At each venue, there’s a designated ticket-seller, who has an eftpos machine. But most of the tickets are sold in advance, so all they need is to be scanned, and this is our job. Fairly straightforward, but sometimes people show up on the wrong night, haven’t got the right tickets etc. so there’s sometimes a bit of arranging to do to get them into the venue.

One of the main venues is Te Auaha, which has a large theatre, a small theatre, and an open cinema area as well. There may be up to six events happening on any one evening. I had four shifts organised over the festival period, but unfortunately missed the first one due to a bout of gastro (which also caused me to miss out on a Toastmasters competition, much to my annoyance). My first, next shift was at Te Auaha, where five performances were being done on a Friday night, and one event in the cinema. There’s usually three people personning such a night, which allows the volunteers to attend a show, as well as doing the scanning and ticketing. At other venues, such as FATG (Fringe At The Gryphon), where there’s only one theatre, you get to see the show(s) if you want to. Overall I did two Te Auaha shifts, and one at FATG. Here’s what I saw:

Caution Wet Floor: a one-man show, about a cleaner at Auckland Airport. For the most part, he pushes a mop around, as ordered to do so by unintelligible commands from his phone. In between, he fantasises about his mop being his girlfriend, going on a date with her, asking her to marry him, and flying away on a honeymoon to Hawai’i. In between, there’s a lot of mopping. There’s no intelligible dialogue, or even monologue – it’s mostly mime or proto-sounds mimicking words. At the end of the show, he finishes his shift and goes home, and then has a perfectly normal conversation with his friend about computer games. He’s probably got about 20 minutes of material, but stretches it out to nearly an hour. A bit weird, but that’s Fringe for you – you go and see things that you wouldn’t normally pick because they sound, well, weird.

To Be Frank: Another week, another one-man show with no words. This time, the protagonist is dressed as a Frankenstein’s Monster, with misshapen limbs, an inability to speak, and, at first, an inability to even stand up. He(it?) figures the latter out fairly quickly. He pulls balloons out, inflates them, draws faces on them, and falls in love with them. The first one he loves a bit to much, and it bursts. The second chases him around the stage. Eventually he forms a lasting relationship with one. There are moments of hilarity interspersed with pathos. Another weird one.

Women Drinking Hemlock: This one was at FATG, the first of two shows that evening. This was a proper play, with words, dialogue, action, scene changes, and a plot. I know! The plot revolves around two bars across the street from each other – an old, established bar run by two men who are complete arseholes, and a new bar run by a bunch of…wait for it…women! The men’s bar is threatened by the newcomer, and they do everything they can to put them out of business – firstly by undercutting them to the point that they’re losing money hand over fist, and when that doesn’t work (because the women make better beer), they decide to poison their new beer with hemlock. It all ends disastrously for the men, the women recover, and the men go to jail. The play focuses on the interactions between the staff at each establishment, previous relationships, and end happily ever after.  

That’s it for the Fringe Festival this year. There’s an after party next week which we’ll probably drop into, but most of the folk volunteering and working are those young types, so we won’t cramp their style for too long. Next up: Cuba Dupa and Classical On Cuba…watch this space!

In Bed With Schoenberg

In bed with who now? Arnold Schoenberg, 20^th century composer, theorist, and inventor of serialism; a hugely influential figure in the world of modern “classical” music, i.e. music for orchestras. Nope, me neither, but Nicola knows all about him. 

In Bed With Schoenberg is on at Circa. It’s basically a one-man show, with a string quartet for accompaniment. The original actor, Andrew Laing, was unable to continue in the role due to unforeseen circumstances, but Circa stalwart Gavin Rutherford was able to step up and take over. We’ve seen him in numerous productions since we’ve been in New Zealand, and his shuffling, grumpy old man has been played almost to death. It would have been interesting to see someone else do it, but it wasn’t to be. Nevertheless, he gave a spectacular performance as Schoenberg in the evening of 13^th July 1951, the day of his death; recalling his past life, his family, his students and friends, and “the shy country boy”. When “the shy country boy” took power in Germany, Schoenberg moved to the US, and poured contempt upon his countrymen for so enthusiastically embracing Nazism. The show was liberally interspersed with music, as he illustrated not just his own work, but also those of other notable pieces relevant to the story – everything from Mozart to Mahler, Bach to Berg, and all points in between. As one of the early proponents of dissonance, his work was often poorly received, and he was regularly booed when premiering his new pieces. All of this is revealed as he tells his life story - heavily edited, of course – as an unreliable witness. At the end (spoiler alert) he dies, as the quartet play Mahler’s Adagietto from Symphony No.5.

Nicola was on ushering duty so we had to hang around a bit and tidy up afterwards, but we were in good time to get down the road to Capitol, for dinner. We’ve not been there in a while (they’ve had reduced opening due to staff shortages, same as everyone else in the post-apocalypse; but as Bluff oyster season has just begun, I felt a revisit was timely. The standard is, as ever, excellent, and yes, I had a half-dozen Bluff oysters to start, followed by venison. Proper restaurant food! Nicola had the bruschetta to start, followed by tarakihi. All good stuff, and quite rich too – so much so that we didn’t linger for pudding.

 

 

Rob Brydon

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. It seems like ages since we’ve been out for entertainment. This isn’t strictly true, as we’ve had a summer of cricket, with mixed results both locally and nationally. We’ve also both been volunteering at the Fringe Festival this year, about which more later. But Rob Brydon! Star of I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue, Gavin And Stacey, and presenter of Would I Lie To You? What’s not to like?

The show was at 8pm, so we took ourselves off for our traditional pre-show dinner. There was one drawback, however, and that is that the show was on a Monday night. In these post-apocalyptic times, many establishments have found themselves short of staff. The solution is to reduce opening hours, so very few restaurants are open on a Monday night. We managed to find one – The Old Quarter, a Vietnamese restaurant on Dixon Street, and booked a table. It was just as well we did, as the place was heaving – with what I guess to be a different demographic to their usual clientele. Yes, pretty well everyone else there was going to the show later.

Dixon Street is just across the way to the Opera House, so we ambled over and took our seats in the gallery. Not the best seats in the house, and looking down somewhat on the band, but better than most because we were in the middle access row so had leg-room once everyone had taken their seats. Not always the case in The Gods…note to self: don’t book seats in the gallery at the Opera House again. In fact, they don’t usually open it up for sale, but this was a sell-out crowd and it was filled to the gunwales. 

Yes, you read that right: a band. Why did Rob Brydon have a band? Well, this was an all-singing, not quite all-dancing comedy show, with music liberally sprinkled throughout the night. As he himself said “this would be a very different show without these people. Profitable, for a start”. There was a pianist, bassist, drummer, guitarist, violinist, cellist, saxophonist and trumpeter. They played various songs from Tom Waits to Tom Jones, all significant to Rob’s story; including a request section in the second half, and finished with his No.1 hit single, Barry Islands In The Stream. In between, he entertained us with stories about his life and career, including celebrity impressions. He also chatted to members of the audience, finding the oldest (Martin, 86), and youngest (Freddie, 11). Commenting on the general attire of the audience, he noted that there was a time when people would dress up to go to the Opera House, but now “I didn’t know Kathmandu did evening dress”.

All good clean fun, we thoroughly enjoyed it. After the final show in Christchurch he’s taking this tour to the West Island, so catch him if you can if you live there.