Auckland Arts Festival: Week 2 Highlights

The first full week of the Auckland Arts Festival is on next week. A couple of the highlights will be Macbeth, an African version of Shakespeare’s play and the Kitchen, from the company which earlier brought The Manganiyar Seduction to the festival in 2011

Macbeth

March 11 – 15

ASB theatre

Set in today's Congo, Macbeth is an inspired adaptation of Verdi's arresting and intense opera.

In this re-creation, a group of Congolese refugees stumble upon a trunk filled with sheet music, costumes and gramophone recordings of Verdi's Macbeth. This theatrical paraphernalia becomes the catalyst for a dramatic re-telling of Shakespeare's tale of ambition, corruption and witchcraft, with the Macbeths as war-lords, the three sisters as double-crossing businessmen and Dunsinane as the Great Lakes region of Central Africa.

Macbeth features a mix of Verdi's original score with imaginative re-arrangements by Belgian composer Fabrizio Cassol. Performed by an on-stage chamber orchestra and 10 rich-voiced African singers, this is theatre for today: moving, fascinating, fast-paced and threaded through with African musical and theatrical influences.

By director Brett Bailey, one of the most "intelligent and soul-bending artists in South Africa" (Liminalities), this Macbeth is a must-see for lovers of opera and admirers of the Bard.

The Kitchen

Cain and Abel Theatre Company

SkyCity Theatre

Mar 14–18

The production uses 100kg of rice, sugar, almonds, milk, raisins, cardamom and ghee but it is as far from any TV cooking show as you can get. It's cooking on a whole other level – cooking as a metaphor for life.

A unique theatrical experience, The Kitchen serves up a ritual fusion of sight, sound, smell and taste all the way from South India. On stage a couple enact a drama without words, stirring huge steamy vats of payasam, a traditional Indian dessert. Behind them, under coppery light, 12 drummers beat out a surging rhythm on their sacred mizhavu drums while the fragrance of aromatic rice wafts through the theatre. This mesmerising mix delights all the senses – especially taste – as the payasam is passed around for sharing afterward.

Audiences were wowed when Indian director Roysten Abel was in Auckland in 2011 with the wildly entertaining concert The Manganiyar Seduction.