Kia Ora...Bitches!: February 2009

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Fringe Festival 2009

What is the Fringe Festival? From the website, the Festival is described as:

Incorporated in 1993, The Fringe Arts Trust will be presenting its 16th Fringe Festival in 2009. The festival has grown from small beginnings to over one hundred events in more than 50 venues all over the Wellington region.
Fringe Festival is recognised as a unique creative launch pad for the arts in New Zealand. Fringe is an open access festival, meaning anyone can produce a show or a creative project and be involved in this annual event.
Hundreds of volunteers and local members of the community donate their time to helping promote and produce the festival each year. We are a much loved part of the New Zealand arts calendar, with a strong brand that is recognised internationally for innovation in art and the creative spirit of Kiwi ingenuity.
The New Zealand Fringe Festival releases the most concentrated mix of new talent, in all arts mediums in the greater Wellington region – 3 exciting weeks of pure Fringe creative genius! Approximately 60,000 festival-goers are treated to the sharpest stand-up, theatre, visual arts, live music, basement productions and cutting-edge multi-media.

Our first Fringe was back in 2007, just a couple of months after moving here. We had no idea how extensive it was, or even which plays to choose from. We ended up going to one of the best plays we have ever seen (to date!) - Lovers of Central Park (I wrote about it in this post.) - which cemented our love for the Fringe.

Last year we were better prepared, and saw some fantastic plays and comedy acts. This year, the Festival covered the entire month of February with heaps more shows than years prior!

We have already seen 9 plays/comedy acts, and have one more to see this weekend. Some have been good, one was terrible, and another was easily the best show in the Festival. Since most of the shows we saw have ended their runs, I'm only going to review the best show in the Festival (and lucky for all you Wellington readers, the show is still running!).

The show I speak of is Adam Page Solo at the Downstage Theatre. The description on the Fringe website was enough to pique our interest, and admittedly, this was the one show that Darren looked forward to the most. Defying the odds, it surpassed all expectations!

Adam has had several good reviews, but the one on texture says it best:

As well as being a demonstration of a phenomenal musical talent, Adam Page Solo is side-splittingly funny. You're taken on a genre-spanning musical journey - one where you suspect neither performer or audience knows what will happen next. Indeed, a good portion of the show is clearly improvised; throughout his set you constantly feel as if Page is deciding on the fly which instrument (there are 15 of them) he'll play next. And one major set piece features him asking the audience for musical genre suggestions, then mashing them all together. On my night, this resulted in a genius combination of "nursery rhyme", "Bollywood", and "techno!"
As per the poster, Page also busts out a vegetable. Normally I understand he uses a carrot - for New Zealand audiences he's selected something different. A local favourite if you will.
I'll sum it up like this - if you love music, you must go and see this show. You might even find that your new favourite band is made up of just one guy: Adam Page.

During our show, he combined Swing, Broadway musical, Gregorian Chants AND Punk - all in one song! And it was fabulous. Adam has a great stage presence; he is very comfortable performing (it's almost like watching a big kid playing with his favorite toys), funny and quite nice too.

If you haven't seen him, book your ticket now! He has 6 more shows at the Downstage Theatre starting tonight. Just to give you a bit more incentive, here is a video (taken with his permission) of him playing a local vegetable.

Yes, that's right...as well as playing 15 other instruments, the man makes an instrument out of a frickin' vegetable and and plays a song with it. Convinced now?

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

New Year's Holiday: Picton

Posted by d at 10:27 PM 2 comments

Part 2 of 2! Most of our holiday was spent in Kaikoura, but we did stay over one night in Picton. We arrived in the early afternoon, so I planned for us to go on a twilight kayaking tour. This was a big deal for me, since (1) I can't swim, (2) the kayaking takes place in the sea, and (3) I don't like to be in water where things live.

We had a few hours to roam around after we checked into our (seemingly) lovely hotel, so we decided to go to the highly touted Aquarium. EcoWorld Aquarium - what a great name, right?They had lots of cute signs outside of the building and cute advertisements in NZ travel brochures. Since we had such a great experience at the Christchurch Aquarium last year, we were ok with the entry price of $17. Besides, this aquarium had a preserved giant squid! And Tuatara!

Once we walked through the doors, though, we knew we had made a mistake. The aquarium can only be described as a very sad, very old, repurposed YMCA. All of the fish and reptiles seemed to be begging us to kill them (or at least set them free). We initially thought these turtles were confused about sex, but we decided the one climbed on the other to try to crush him to death as an act of mercy.

Look at those eyes pleading for freedom!

We didn't take a picture of the "giant squid" because we couldn't see it. The (very, very dirty) glass case where it was encased could have contained anything - or nothing at all - there's no telling, really.

They did have a video called "In Search of the Giant Squid". We caught it late, and watched for about 10 minutes or so until it ended....with no giant squid in sight. A couple in front of us had watched the entire 30 minute video! To be fair, the video wasn't called "Finding the Giant Squid", or "Hey Look, There's a Giant Squid"...

To get over the horror that was 'EcoWorld', we wandered around the lovely Picton waterfront until it was time for our kayaking tour. Like Darren's horseback riding picture, my first-time kayaking picture is equally non-existent. But here is Darren with the kayak after the 3 1/2 hour tour.

During the tour, we kayaked out to the little island in the foreground. It was a gorgeous evening! Turns out I really like kayaking once I forget that I'm on the open sea where a shark could turn over the kayak and eat me.

After a sleepless night in our lovely hotel that happened to be a block away from the railroad tracks and an (apparently) all-night skateboard park, we wandered around the beautiful waterfront of Picton before catching the Ferry -

On the way to the Ferry landing, we passed this old boat that is being restored (or has been restored..?). We could have spent some money to get more information, but we didn't care that much.

On our way home, with one last look back to Picton...

Saturday, February 07, 2009

New Year's Holiday: Kaikoura

Posted by d at 4:00 PM 3 comments

Yes, our holiday was well over a month ago, and I even uploaded these pictures right after we got back from our trip. It's taken me all this time to think of some clever commentary to go along with them (hope you aren't expecting too much!)...

As some of you may remember, we were in Kaikoura for one night over New Year's last year. This year we stayed a few more days in hopes of going whale-watching. Well, not so much 'hope' as 'determined', but in the end the result was the same as last year: the water conditions were too harsh for the boat.

We loved our time in Kaikoura despite the choppy sea and the inefficient whale watching company. It's a lovely little town halfway between Picton (where the Ferry lands) and Christchurch (the place where people base themselves to see surrounding towns because it doesn't have much to offer).

Kaikoura, literally 'food'(kai)/'crayfish' has it all: snow-capped mountains, beaches, and an un-ending view of the ocean. Oh! And a Monteith's bar. :)

Like most towns in New Zealand, Kaikoura has a skate park for kids and adults alike. This one has a spectacular view:

A little ways down the beach is this awesome chair...

...with its own fantastic view.

We don't have a car - this isn't news, right? Our favorite hotel in Kaikoura is about a 40 minute (flat, straight) walk from town. Along the way are many other hotels/B&Bs, as well as private homes with front gardens. Check out these flowers!

One evening, we headed out to the afore-mentioned Monteith's bar, and discovered they had a beer tree! An entire tree of BEER! It included 6 of the Monteith's beers and one other beer they have on tap. I think I drank two, maybe 2 1/2. Darren graciously finished off the rest.

On the way back, we noticed a couple of people staring at a tree...only to find a few birds (Shags) were all lined up on the branches:

Darren had never been horseback riding before (called simply horse riding, or horse trekking here), and it had been on his list of 'things to do' for quite a while. I found the Fyffe ranch online - they offer treks into the woods/across rivers, as well as sunset rides into the mountains (when it's not too windy).

This is the only picture we took! The camera was stowed for safekeeping, and in our rush to get back to town for our whale watching cruise that was (later) canceled, we didn't snap a photo of Darren on a horse. You'll just have to believe us.

After the third and final failed attempt to go whale watching, we headed back to the hotel. The whale watching company is in the same building as the tiny railway station, which has a gigantic parking lot where people seem to just hang out.