What the critics are saying

“Raw. Honest. Unapologetically real”.

“This performance is not just art. It is ceremony”.

By Ingrid Campbell

There are performances that entertain, and then there are those that transform. Bones is the latter. Resonance echos through the cellular. Julian Noel stands alone on stage but carries the presence of generations—living, dead, silenced, and roaring. What he offers is no mere one-man show; it is a spiritual and ancestral reckoning, an unflinching mirror held up to colonial violence, familial rupture, and the complex, painful inheritance of identity.

Raw. Honest. Unapologetically real.

From his koro’s nightmares of war, to the silent agony of his mother’s sexual abuse and mental anguish, Noel weaves a story that bleeds truth. It is not linear—it is layered, spiralling through time and memory, anchored in te ao Māori, but also navigating the whitewashed terrain of colonial expectation. The transitions between narration and dramatised embodiment are seamless, carrying us through decades of trauma, loss, dislocation, and survival.

He speaks of being removed from whenua, of foster homes, nuns’ houses, dust, scones, and the lingering scent of broken safety. Of brown boys stripped of home, dignity, and name. Of his Pākehā father—army, adultery, and silence. Of his displacement from home for 35 years, swallowed by war, racism, machinery, and mining. Anger bolts into machinery, and colonial masculinity becomes both armour and wound.

And yet—through all of it—his words are alive. Sailing into ears, flooding the room with echoes of ancestors, beckoning us not just to watch, but to walk alongside. It is in the walking that we witness the reclamation. The powerful return home. The profound, shaking declaration: "Let me be white? Fuck that!" And still—grief. Still—shame. Still—the ache to belong.

But Bones does not leave us there. It lifts us, finally, into the wisdom of a kuia, into the rongoā of storytelling, into the whakapapa of healing.

This performance is not just art. It is ceremony. Bones can talk!

“BONES is an unmissable piece of theatre”.

“Bold, innovative, and deeply moving”.

By Kate Lindsay

BONES performed at Whare Taupua as part of Arts Murihiku’s May ‘Mini Fest’ weekend, is a theatrical experience that lingers in the heart long after the standing ovation wanes.

Reviewed by Kate Lindsay

Written and performed by Julian Noel, the play is based on his own book and draws inspiration from the life of his mother, Māori artist and poet Eve Patuawa Nathan.

While the story is fictional, a powerful thread of truth runs through every scene, grounding the performance in lived experience and generational memory.

Noel’s approach is both intimate and innovative. Audience members participate in song, transformed into living, breathing whānau; drawing us further into the heart of the story.

The staging is creative and clever. Beneath the ominous looking sheet, kitchen utensils are transformed from weapons to musical instruments with a mere flick of the wrist.

Noel’s performance is a tour de force as he inhabits eight distinct family members, including his grandmother, various uncles and himself as child. Each character is drawn with empathy and depth, their stories interweaving to create a family tapestry of love, loss, and survival.

The play fearlessly explores hard-hitting themes: the PTSD suffered by returned World War II soldiers, the enduring scars of colonialism, violence and abuse hidden behind closed doors, the trauma of foster care, and the profound impact of Māori urbanisation—especially for those left behind in rural marae communities.

‘Bones’ is an unmissable piece of theatre—bold, innovative, and deeply moving. Julian Noel’s performance is both a tribute to his whakapapa and a gift to the audience, inviting us all to reflect on the stories written in our own bones. Whether you come for the artistry, the history, or the chance to sing along, you’ll leave changed