Antarctic drama comes to MTG

Storytelling, folk tunes and illustrations weave a picture of early Antarctic exploration in Bond Street Bridge's latest show. Photo/Supplied.

Bond Street Bridge will perform their award-winning show, The Explorers Club: Antarctica, in the newly renovated MTG foyer on Friday.

Following sold-out performances at Auckland and Wellington Fringe Festivals, the band is set to wow Hawke's Bay crowds from 7pm.

The Auckland alt-folksters tell incredible tales of Captain Scott, Sir Ernest Shackleton and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration using a combination of folk songs, storytelling and illustrations.

Songwriter Sam Prebble has turned a fascination with the Antarctic into a multi-faceted, collaborative work of art.

After months lost in books and dusty library shelves, pawing over old photographs, maps and devouring first-hand accounts of adventure and mishap on the ice, he emerged with a collection of tunes.

The result recalls hardships and celebrates the extraordinary pluck of explorers who first set foot on frozen wastes.

Original tracks combine material from the explorers' journals, lines from poets and writers who inspired their exploits, and a treasure trove of recent Antarctic scholarship; weaving tales of courage, endurance and humanity in the face of defeat.

The stories of Captain Oates walking to his death, Scott freezing in his tent, writing to the last, and Shackleton who sailed hundreds of miles in an open boat to save his men, are retold through heartbreaking ballads or foot-stomping sea shanties.

"Auckland libraries has an amazing collection of Antarctic books, so it was really just seeing them, seeing the pictures and reading Scott's diary, which captured me," he said in an earlier interview.

"When you consider that his diary was written at the end of each day after an exhausting march, in a tiny tent, pitched on ice, often in a howling gale, and of course he never got a chance to revise it because he died - it's amazing.

"It's incredibly lyrical and literate and moving, and so intelligent. From start to finish, it's a gripping narrative. It really grabbed me, his ease of expression, and it just made me want to read more."

Doors open for The Explorers Club: Antarctica from 6.30pm on Friday. Tickets are $15 (adults), $12 (students), $5 (children) and include a complimentary beverage. Cash bar and food available.