Category: Review

For ten nights Auckland Live’s Cabaret Season took over The Civic and gave our nightlife the bustling, camp and glitzy atmosphere that we deserve all year round. Oliver Hall discusses his highlights. From glittering-curtain-clad entranceways to bars that required a password to enter, The Civic never looks quite as fabulous as when the cabaret festival […]

Demi Cox reads Lil O’Brien’s coming of age tale and relives her own past in the process. I don’t think I’ve read a book that has made me think as much as Lil O’Brien’s, Not That I’d Kiss a Girl, which has left me with a heavy heart and a peculiar desire to return to […]

Just a drive from Christchurch, a ferry from Wellington or a flight from Auckland, Marlborough is one of the world’s greatest wine regions and at its heart sits Blenheim. Now the town boasts an ornate historic hotel, that combines modern hospitality with a class from the past. When you pull up to Blenheim’s Hotel d’Urville […]

Daniel Devenney takes a look at early 21st Century gay literature, Alan Downs’ The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man’s World, and discovers how quickly times have changed. “The experience of being a gay man in the twenty-first century is different from that of any other minority, sexual […]

Kiwi Pop Princess Miss Geena shares her musical musts for your self-isolation. Five pop artists who will add some sparkle to your day.  Lontalius I was lucky to see this incredible artist perform at Auckland Pride’s OurParty. It’s refreshing and important to see talented queer representation in the NZ music industry. The Wellington-based singer-songwriter’s 2019 […]

Historian Gareth Watkins selects his most significant moments from Aotearoa’s queer history from February’s past. 3 February 1944 Human rights campaigner Sister Paula Brettkelly was born in the United Kingdom. As a child she emigrated with her family to New Zealand, entering the Sisters of St Joseph in 1961. In the mid-1980s Brettkelly read about […]

2017 saw Queenstown register a record 3 million visitors and numbers have only increased since. express gets away from the hustle and bustle of mountain town’s hub, by basking in the quiet, sophisticated luxury of The Rees Hotel. Built-in 2007, The Rees Hotel Queenstown is a five-star hotel situated right on the shores of Lake […]

James Malcolm checks out Testostrogen and Never Say Never at Auckland’s Pitt St Theatre. It was a Pride 2016 that many of us were introduced to the work of playwright Joanna Pearce with her pioneering trans musical People Like Us which featured a cast brimming with local talent including Cindy of Samoa, Ramon Te Wake, […]