For three weeks, the Auckland Arts Festival has brought a bevy of local and international artworks to Tāmaki Makaurau. Sam Brooks looks back on his highlights.

My favourite show

It’s not always a good sign when a show breaks the containment of the fairly insular arts scene – it can happen to the wrong show, or the right show for the wrong reasons. However, The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave is absolutely the right show to break containment. Everyone I’ve talked to about it, regardless of background or arts scene knowhow, has raved about it. This dance show, which premiered at Basement Theatre in 2024, had a triumphant hometown return at Q’s Rangatira space, turning it into a club for an hour of endurance theatre. It remains the best blend of high art and accessible art that I’ve seen, and if it ever comes back to Tāmaki, see it. You won’t regret it.

My biggest letdown – that still has me thinking

Sincere Apologies has put me in a strange place for a few days now. The concept of the show feels robust at first – every audience member reads out an apology, some real, some big, some small, some imagined – but there are too many holes in the show that left me frustrated. Some of the “big” apologies in the show, which has been adapted for Auckland and I presume is adapted for every location it tours to, are genuine unresolved traumas. The apology from the government regarding the Royal Commission Inquiry into the Abuse in State Care felt especially tone-deaf, not just because of the apology, but the context. These are sprinkled among more jokey apologies and fictional apologies (including some speculative future apologies), and gives the idea that the makers – who are Australian based – haven’t quite considered how they might land with a local crowd. I’m still thinking about it almost a week later, albeit mostly in consternation, so perhaps the makers achieved what they wanted.

The biggest surprise

Aotea Square has felt like the most underutilised aspect of the Auckland Arts Festival for a few years now. I’m old enough to remember the days when the square, turned into the festival garden for a few weeks, was pumping every night for almost a month, when artists and audiences from both the Arts Festival and the Auckland Fringe Festival would mingle, dance and drink until the early hours in the morning. For whatever reason, that vibe has never been recaptured.

Until now. This year, Aotea Square felt absolutely pumping. Whether it was due to a consistent programme of free live music, a deeply appealing sculpture called Evanescent by Atelier Sisu adjacent, or just a sudden late surge of summer, the festival garden was alive with everything you want from a festival. Artists, audiences, and vibes aplenty. It felt like a hub, and one that will be sorely missed for the 11 months the festival isn’t on.

The show I wish I saw

I saw a lot of shows in the festival (my schedule says 12, but my soul says 112), but the one I missed that I wish I saw was Wet, out at Henderson’s Te Pou Theatre. I heard great things about this comedy – about a woman whose secret life as a romance novelist suddenly becomes less secret, and more chaotic for her family – and I hope it has a second life somewhere.

The show you should keep an eye out for

He Kākano was the playreading series this year, showcasing new work by Māori playwrights. Alex Medland’s Becoming Jeff Bezos has a killer premise – in a semi-post-apocalyptic New Zealand, a woman hunts down the last person on Earth who is not signed up to UberEats – and is one of the best plays I’ve heard read in eons. The scale is potentially too small for a mainstage, but an enterprising young director needs to snap this script up immediately. Two (admittedly) great actors reading it from behind music stands left me more moved than shows with comparatively eyewatering budgets.

The moments that stuck with me

Getting to see the last 20 minutes of Waiora, 20 of the best minutes in New Zealand theatre, in the flesh. The final, devastating, moments of NZ Opera’s Bluebeard’s Castle, showing a woman alone in her marriage and her mind. The curtain drop in Circa’s Duck Pond. Just about every moment in Ten Thousand Hours, showcasing the art in athleticism. The quiet opening of The Visitors, an Indigenous woman looking out at colonisers she wants to believe the best of.

And, to be slightly sentimental, the moments when I saw Auckland showing up to these shows. We’re so often fed the idea that people aren’t going out anymore, but the vibe I got from the past few weeks is that if you put on shows people want to see, people show up. Wild concept, I know.