NZ visual diary - entry 47

Auckland's Civic Theatre

Inside and out the Civic Theatre on Queen Street in Auckland's central business district is a stunning piece of architecture. It is the largest extant atmospheric theatre in Australasia.

Randolph and I were patrons recently of the Civic to see the musical Girl from the North Country. The show, set in the Great Depression era of 1930s America, features songs from Bob Dylan's discography. The musical transcriptions emphasised the elegiac quality of Dylan's music, a confluence of hymnal and gospel genres, especially when sung by vocalists as magnificent as those on stage for our performance.

I use the term 'monumental architecture' to describe a two-fold quality possessed by public and quasi-public buildings like the Civic. Monumental architecture denotes a building of enormous size, buildings that are intended to dwarf human scale and in doing so engender feelings in us of awe, inspiration and limitless wonder. By this measure of outsized proportion the Civic brilliantly succeeds.

The compounded meaning of monumental is an allusion to celebration and loss - a reverential nod to victory and grief in warfare or pride of public accomplishment. In this regard, we might think of a war memorial coliseum or central train station and post office.

Had the production been only half as good as it was I would have been satisfied, if only to have had the opportunity to gaze in wonder at the unabashed audacity of the Civic's interior spaces.