Paula Green reviews three new volumes of poetry from New Zealand writers.

Boldly and cleverly, this Flaxworks solo show is built upon one solitary, striking symbol of celebrity.

Paul Simei-Barton reviews Silk, on at the Basement Theatre as past of the Auckland Fringe Festival

After creating a sensation at the previous Auckland Arts Festival, the creators of The Arrival have returned with an exquisitely crafted rhapsody of image and movement-based theatre.

On the run from ruthless enemies, teenager John Smith (Alex Pettyfer) must come to terms with his alien heritage to get the girl (Dianna Agron) and save the planet.

The last time Roxy Music played in New Zealand it was in a Waikato field as the headliners of Sweetwaters 1981.

Programme of tasty morsels served with wonderful flair

Though Sue Orr's new collection of short stories, From Under The Overcoat, references short stories by literary greats such as Nikolay Gogol (The Over Coat) and James Joyce (The Dead), don't hold that against it.

A sickbed obsession culminates in moving musings about the beauty of our world.

Heroes don't come much kookier than Xerxes. He may be the King of Persia but he opens Handel's opera by extolling the beauties of a plane tree; a man who, as one character comments, "is aroused by a rough trunk."

Rating: 5/5. Verdict: History recorded

A knockabout Kiwindian comedy with a light seasoning of pathos, this self-funded project does not exceed the expectations raised by its modest origins.

Rating: 4/5. Verdict: More absurd fun from Georgia's most colourful, camp and clever band

Based on Posy Simmond's graphic novel, originally serialised in the Guardian's Review supplement, Tamara Drewe is a light and frothy satire on life and lust in a quiet English country village.

Rating: 4/5. Verdict: Setting their controls to the heart of the sun

Deep in the Forest is subtitled a Cautionary Cabaret and punters should be cautioned to exercise a certain amount a scepticism when viewing the show's promotional material.

One of the pleasures of reading an essayist as eclectic as Geoff Dyer is that one can go within a few pages from regarding him as a fount of wisdom (when his opinions match yours) to thinking he's a pretentious phoney (when they don't).

For women of a certain (or uncertain) age, remembering nothing is not difficult. Remembering something is more problematic. Thus, women of a certain age will be enchanted by Nora Ephron's take on memory, or lack of it.

It's been six months since the last Joyce Carol Oates, so it's not surprising to find she has another book out. Her productivity is astonishing, she's Barbara Cartland in black instead of pink.

Confession time: I'd never read anything by Anne Rice before this. For a while, I thought she was another name for Stephenie Meyer. She's not (of course), but she could be.

I began this book when a William Lobb rose was in its first flowering in my garden. Every time I went out to get the mail the perfume hung in the air and I breathed it in and felt good about being alive.