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  • Writer's pictureTE RĀKAU

'Bigger and better' – Dog & Bone

Ewen Coleman for The Dominion Post | 22 January 2016


Ewen Coleman reviews Dog & Bone for The Dominion Post.

 

Two actors grasp hands on a dimly lit stage. Lighting illuminates their bare arms and chest
Helen Pearse-Otene's play Dog and Bone paints a picture of a time back in our history when "savage" lives were cheap and hungry colonial greed ruled. | Aneta Pond 2016

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.


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