Reviewers give their reflections after week one of the Auckland Fringe Festival

examined war and friendship. Although the storyline was conventional in its plotting, it’s delivery and characterisation were profoundly touching. There were excellent performances from Shaun Fahey and Mihailo Ladevac but the deeply personal journey has a strange, almost prosaic, twist towards the end — one that, like Ladylike, forced the truth of the performer to rub awkwardly against the world created by the performance. — Dione Joseph dance and theatre reviewer dedicated to lengthy musical numbers that, while entertaining, lacked the lyrical wit or memorable notes to make up for the absence of a leading character. An amazing idea in the making, it needs finetuning to let Jenny find her voice. Elsewhere, it took only the first few minutes of Mackenzie’s Daughter to make a strong case for making the soap opera riff a regular fixture. A cast of many of Auckland’s most talented young actors and comedians tore apart the soap opera genre in an hour that was consistently funny. The entire thing was improvised and the whole cast fully embraced the ridiculousness and madness that comes with that. Alice Snedden, Hayley Sproull and Lana Walters bounced effortlessly off each other as the warring family members who would give Joan Collins a run for her money. A slightly different cast and premise is on next Saturday at the Basement.

— Ethan Sills theatre reviewer Ana Chaya Scotney’s evocative vocals in Contours of Heaven were wonderful: breathing became waves, then a storm, beatboxing and seagull cries in fluid metamorphosis. She created beauty from documentary by using these sounds (and dynamically lit stylised movement) to respond to the real voices she channels

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