Brian Rudman: Splash out on good times and ensure a return

Face it, sitting at home fretting about the economy and the onset of winter will solve nothing.

So put the long face to one side for the next 10 days and have some fun at the Auckland Festival instead.

Not only will it cheer you up, but, under the old "use it or lose it" theory, you will also be ensuring that in years to come, there will still be a festival to attend.

A week into this month's event, box office income is 25 per cent up on the 2007 festival's take at the same time, which, considering the difficulties in selling tickets to any sort of entertainment event in today's economic doldrums, is no mean feat, according to the industry.

The problem for Auckland Festival 2009 is it has many more events than 2007, and so has a lot more tickets to sell.

Festival chairman Richard Waddel says this one "is a huge step up from the last one ... we have a lot more shows and bigger shows".

Not helping the blood pressure is Aucklanders' legendary last minuteitis when it comes to purchasing tickets.

"I think the Wellington festival sells roughly 50 per cent of its tickets before Christmas," said Mr Waddel. . "We sold something like 8 per cent of ours in that period in 2007, and this year we've doubled that."

But ever the optimist, he says he's happy with progress.

"I've said before, it's like building a house. You've just got to up the quality of it each time and if you do, you will build a very strong brand."

Looking back to the first stuttering attempt to revive the Auckland Festival brand, in 2003, you can only admire the progress that has been made towards that goal against great odds.

With this year's event, we finally have a festival with the depth and breadth of activity to truly warrant the title. It's starting to match Wellington's International Arts Festival in its heyday. As well as the headline acts, punters can now chose from a bewildering lucky dip of experimental fringe events, including chamber music twilight concerts, jazz and cabaret.

What makes a festival are the extraordinary events that would never reach this town without a festival umbrella. Nostalgia, a theatrical event by the famous Japanese company Ishinha, is such a show.

I saw it on Wednesday night and the fear is, by the time word gets around about what a fascinating show it is, it will be too late.

Like a similarly unfamiliar dramatic event, The Andersen Project, which starts in the same venue for a short season next Thursday, there are plenty of seats still to be had.

Nostalgia, which ends on Sunday, commemorates the 100th anniversary of Japanese migration to Brazil, but as the Japanese Consul General, Takamichi Okabe, said after the opening, the message is one all migrant populations will respond to whether they came to their new land by waka or aeroplane.

My only advice, get a head start and read the free programme notes beforehand. I didn't. As for the show, don't worry about your lack of Japanese. After 15 minutes, you'll think you're a fluent speaker. It's the action that tells the story anyway.

Let's hope The Andersen Project is similarly intriguing.

It's one of the events where you put your trust in festival director David Malacari to deliver - and his track record has been spot on.

Mr Waddel is disappointed about ticket sales to the two events at North Shore City's Bruce Mason Centre, Circus Oz, which he says is a great show for young and old, and Venus and Adonis, which follows it next Wednesday.

Basing Circus Oz on the Shore was a condition of a grant from the North Shore Arts Trust. If North Shoreites want the festival to spread out of the CBD heartland, they still have time to prove the demand is there. Equally, it wouldn't do any harm if more south-siders crossed over from time to time.

Finally, for those with more mainstream tastes, there's always the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in the Town Hall tonight and tomorrow playing Mahler's roof-lifting Third Symphony. If you say you heard about it on Newstalk ZB, you get a 15 per cent discount. It worked for me anyway.

The important thing is, have some fun while you can. Store it up in case the Jeremiahs are right.