'Bigger and better' – Dog & Bone
Ewen Coleman for The Dominion Post | 22 January 2016
Ewen Coleman reviews Dog & Bone for The Dominion Post.
Dog & Bone
By Helen Pearse-Otene, directed by Jim Moriarty
Te Rakau Theatre Trust, Soundings Theatre, Te Papa, Wellington, 7pm nightly until January 31
Having first been on stage in 2012, Te Rakau Theatre Trust's epic tale Dog and Bone, currently playing at the Soundings Theatre, Te Papa is now even bigger and better this time around.
From the audience arriving to be greeted by the cast as yapping dogs around their ankles, to the final solitary moment, this play, lyrically and poetically written by Helen Pearse-Otene, is one of grand and operatic proportions.
Under Jim Moriarty's direction, the large cast of more than 25 performers of all ages fill the Soundings stage magnificently and bring Pearse-Oten's epic tale to life.
Set on the south coast of Wellington in 1869, it is a fictional tale based on historical facts, garnered from the diaries of settlers and Armed Constabulary, newspaper articles and oral histories of the local iwi.
And, as the programme notes explain, it paints a picture of a time back in our history when "savage" lives were cheap and hungry colonial greed ruled.
Read more on the Stuff news website.