Gig Review: Bret McKenzie @ Hannah Playhouse, Lōemis Festival, Wellington – 19/06/2025

I can count on one hand the number of music gigs I’ve seen at the Hannah Playhouse. Funded by the infamous shoe company and built in the early 70’s it was an iconic theatre location in the Capital. It’s been the longtime home of Downstage Theatre and Capital E and is now a venue at large.

I’ve worked on a number of shows there myself and despite the hash brutalist design, bizarre turret staircases and pokey dressing rooms the grand old lady has a certain understated, laid-back charm about it that you can’t quite describe. Perfect for our very own master of downbeat humour, Bret McKenzie.

Suffering from a bit of a lurgy, Bret’s voice is a little bit off point tonight, as he noted himself. But, true to form, he turned that into an advantage, threatening that the high notes could break into pained squeaks, and even worse, the lowest notes could provide an overly sexed drawl. To anyone else, that’d be devastating. But for him, it’s just another tool in the comedy tool kit.

Bret makes no pretensions about tonight being anything hi-brow. We may be all sitting down, but that’s because it’s 6.30pm, at the end of a working day and we haven’t had dinner yet. “If you get hungry, just pop out and smash a burger,” Bret quips, “We’ll wait for you.”

Backed by a band he calls “The Wellington Wrecking Crew”, The State Highway Wonders (guitarist Justin ‘Firefly’ Clarke, keyboardist Leo Coghini, drummer Ben Lemi, bassist Jacqui Nyman, trombonist Kaito Walley, Saxophonist Louise Williamson and vocalists Moana ‘Mo’ Leoti and Katelin Little) they quietly usher in the first few tracks under a moody blanket of warm winter ambers and reds.

The pre-show music was all Randy Newman. Unsurprisingly, the first couple of tracks, the title from the new album, Freak Out City, and Too Young, both fit snuggly into that quirky, storytelling ironic style that Newman does so well. No surprise. Bret’s his biggest fan.

The new single All I Need, which also features the band in the video, was one of the highlights tonight. I like the mood and groove of the tune, the deprecating lyrics and the lost-L.A swagger of the music.

Looking to the last release, he pops in the “smooth as” tune Dave’s Place from the Songs Without Jokes album, which fits in the set nicely.

About now, Bret is ready for a bit of a yarn. He tells us a about a time, in the early days of the Flight of The Conchords we he and Jerome booked a venue at the Calgary Fringe Festival which turned out to be a dodgy backstreet garage. Hours handing out flyers netted them one single punter, a woman lugging her shopping home. But she came, groceries and all. Halfway through the show they heard bags rustling as she snuck out. “Real character-building stuff!”, he sighs. But who got the last laugh, I wonder!

We’ll never know who that woman was but she earned a dedication for the Conchords’ song The Most Beautiful Girl In The Room. It’s hard to imagine they were nothing but successful, just Kiwi laid back and unassuming. No tall poppies in this room.

We got more of that humour in the introduction of a sweet deal John Pine cover, That’s The Way The World Goes ‘Round. Bret says he was acting on advice from a friend. “Make sure you put a well-known cover on your album. That’s what they did the 70’s and that song became a hit, shifted heaps of albums. Yeah, I chose an obscure cover instead. Why?,” he jokes, “Perhaps it’ll end up being in a TV advert. Maybe for insurance.” Yeah, that’d work. Play this song as a jingle while the house falls down and the 0800 number pops up.

Dreams was supposed to feature in a movie about a small time pony who is transformed by glitter and affirmative phrasing (Netflix’s Thelma The Unicorn), we learned. It was a peaceful, floaty thing, showing Bret’s sensitive side. He does quite a bit of composition work in the kid’s movie space and this showed off why he’s so good at it, I think. It was a sweet, almost lullaby like thing. I really enjoyed drifting off.

A couple more new ones, We’re In Love and another Newman-esque one called Bethnal Green Blues. I’m sure there’s a story behind this modern vaudeville number but that might have to save for another day.

“I put a version of this on the socials,” Bret says, as he introduces as What The Fuck Happened. “The American audiences resonated with it.” Indeed, they did. But it’s a very gentle thing, with interchangeable lyrics that could fit any occasion. Use your own imagination to fit it to the time and crime, I guess.

Moving to his famous red keyboard, Bret brings up the story of Merch In Murchison. On tour, once, to meet needs must, they’d raided the local Op Shop to get egg cups for the Merch stand. Since then, it’s been a band joke, to sell second hand tat at gigs – at least in theory.

So, tonight, Bret brings out three potentials from the Sally’s in Newtown – a dolphin balancing thingy, an appalling 70’s Polka album with an even more terrible cover, “and for the ‘High Rollers, a tower of butter! That’s over $30 there,” he laughs, referencing the high price of export dairy currently.

He asks the audience for ideas for a song. A lady in the 5th row shouts, “The Council cut down my favourite tree.” “I usually go for love songs, but OK.” And over the course of the next ten minutes the audience and Bret engage in a free flow of ideas and lyrical concepts. That gets worked into a song about the “WCC cutting down her tree despite her protestations”, with the best lines coming out on a super adlibbed band groove: “I said no, Mr CC Man!” Got to love it. My favourite part of the evening.

The night rounds off, no encore, with an early Black Seeds cut called One By One. That got us all giggling in our seat, but I felt the stage manager had come on a bit too soon and shut us down.

Tonight, Bret McKenzie and band were doing well, but not totally on fire. Maybe that was the colds and the winter blues. Maybe it was the early hour. They’d just warmed up, and I needed more. I could wait for dinner!

Photo Credit: Tim Gruar
Bret McKenzie Photo Gallery