Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox

Scott Bradlee’s Post-modern Jukebox: The Opera House, 18 October I’ve been a big fan of Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox for years. Their soulful jazz/swing covers of pop hits is just the right way to help me know what’s popular with the kids these days, but without having to actually listen to them in their modern renditions. I missed their show last year and I was gutted, but then this year I saw they were coming back! And there was no way I was missing them again. I even flew down from Auckland where I’d been working just so I could make the show. My date and I arrived a few…

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Comedy Festival: Tim Batt & Disasteradio in Space Couch: A Live Comedy Chat Show

Tim Batt has been around the New Zealand stand-up comedy scene for well over a decade now. In that time he has perhaps never quite reached the potential that is quite clearly there. Space Couch is perhaps the best format for Tim’s brand of comedy and is a really really good show.

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Comedy Festival: Hamish & Lynette Parkinson in Me ‘n’ Ma

This show was either going to be hilarious or an utter train wreck. The premise was so fucking bold. Hamish brings his mother, Lynette, on stage and then the two of them sit on a couch and talk shit and drink wine for an hour.

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Comedy Festival: Eli Matthewson in Myth and Legend

In 2015 I got an email from Eli Matthewson asking if I’d like to come and review his show “Faith”. I get a lot of these requests and I don’t go to every single show, but I try to get to those who pro-actively ask.

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Comedy Festival: David Correos in Better than I was last time

David Correos is not going to be for everyone. You should know that about his comedy. He is 100% for me, but I love the insanity.

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Comedy Festival: James Acaster in Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999

When I last reviewed James Acaster in 2016, I said the next time he came to New Zealand he’d be doing a show at the Opera House or somesuch because he was that good that smaller venues couldn’t contain him.

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Comedy Festival: Ivan Aristeguieta in The Fourth Floor

Ivan Aristeguieta is a Venezuelan currently living in Australia. It’s his first time in Wellington he tells us, but he’s got a strong supporter base of Wellington’s Venezuelan’s community to cheer loudly and laugh along at the bits of the show which don’t quite land – which fortunately are not many at all.

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Reviewminator

Fill your reviewhole with reviews! So this site has laid pretty dormant for a while. Life has been happening. As a result there hasn’t been much published here barring the odd theatre review done by our wonderful theatre critic! Recently I had a conversation with a friend and it sparked my interest again. It’s Comedy Festival time and I’m reviewing a bunch of shows. So with this in mind, I’ve decided to focus the Ruminator on reviews. We’ll review theatre, music, film, theatre, restaurants, food, stand-up comedy…anything. We will review anything. I want it to be a fun place where you can get arts and culture reviews, tech reviews, etc.…

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Herald has eight left columnists and one right one: Redux

Over at KiwiBlog, David Farrar has done a seriously low-effort post. Usually I wouldn’t demean myself by responding but I’m involved in the post, and it was such a pile of wrong that I couldn’t help myself.

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Comedy fest review: White Man Behind a Desk in WMBADx: Idea worth spreading

White Man Behind a Desk has scaled heights faster than most comedians get to. For the last wee while he’s been honing his Colbert/Stewart pastiche and delivering lefty sermons with humour from behind his desk and building quite the following.

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Comedy fest review: Eli Matthewson in An Inconvenient Poof

I feel almost a paternal instinct towards Eli’s comedy. I saw him in his Billy T nominated show ‘Faith’ in 2015, then again last year in ‘The Year of Magical Fucking’ and I usually will leave it at a couple of shows to review a comic before I move on to someone else.

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Comedy fest review: Wilson Dixon in What a Country!

I have been hanging out to see Wilson Dixson for years. There’s something super alluring about what he does. The cowboy shtick that he has down to a fine art, that soft picking at the guitar as he gently woos you with his drawl and his songs. This year was my first time seeing a full Wilson Dixon hour and I wasn’t disappointed.

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Comedy Fest Review: Marcel Lucont in Etc. A Chat Show

I knew it. I knew Marcel Lucont would be a phenomenal show. I saw his show a couple of years ago when he was last in New Zealand and it was one of the shows I was most looking forward to

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Comedy Fest Review: Donna Brookbanks in You do you babes

What a joyous eruption of chaos, energy and laughter. Donna’s show You do you babes is crammed full with so much energy, so much material that it’s almost exhausting.

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Redistribute my ass

Massive sexual assault trigger warnings. There was a vehicle murder in Toronto recently. A guy drove his car into a large group of people and so far he has been charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder. On his Facebook page, the attacker wrote “The Incel rebellion has begun”. And if you didn’t know what incels are then you’re probably lucky.

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Comedy fest review: Alice Snedden in Self-titled: Volume II

Alice Snedden is a fucking good comedian. I try to get along to as many Billy T Nominee shows in Wellington as possible because I often don’t know much about the comics and so frequently unearth some gold, like Guy Montgomery from a few years back. Alice is like Guy in that I went in knowing little and left being super impressed.

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Comedy fest review: Lucy Roche & Ray O’Leary in Young, dumb and full of comedy

Lucy Roche and Ray O’Leary are a couple of NZ comics on the up and up. Lucy won the National Raw Comedy Quest in 2016 and Ray was a Billy T Award nominee last year. They both have a solid resume of shows and experience but there’s still a bit of work to be done.

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Comedy fest review: James Veitch in Dot Con

James Veitch is known for his hilarious emails, no not the guy who tried to pay his power bills with a spider-drawing, but for being the guy who emails back scammers. The Nigerian Prince types.

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