28.08.08

Duct Apes

Posted in Reviews at 11:58 pm by alby

Well this evening’s entertainment was an eye-opener and no mistake.

Tom had managed to finagle a couple of free seats to see “Aluminum“[sic].  In the end me, Tom, P&C went.  Tom’s freebies came from a guy called Matt who turned up with 6 free tickets and 2 companions so we had to buy ourselves 1 ticket.  Cue Tom using his student discount.

The show should really have been at the Palladium but as this was Nottingham it was not to be.

We had no idea what to expect really.  We’d been lead to believe it was “a bit like Stomp“.  Other descriptions mentioned circus arts, illusion and performance.  So without a clear definition we went in a bit blind.  Magic - just how shows should be.  So we steeled ourselves and headed in.

We ended up in the 3rd row of the stalls.  And I was right in the middle.  Top seat!

The set up was a few ducts dangling from the roof and loads of smaller ducts coiled up on the floor.

It started with some people in weird silver flight attendant style mode telling us not to smoke, drink, eat ore use our phones.  And they set the mood as dark and foreboding - lots of low rumbling noise and industrial sounds going on.

Then the dangling ducts started bouncing up and down a bit and throwing themselves around.  At the same time it was like the floor came alive and the tangle of smaller ducts started pushing itself off the stage.  This bit was cool and slightly spooky.  I couldn’t see exactly what was going on and having inanimate objects just pushing themselves out into the world made for an intriguing start.

This was looking good.

Then a piece of fat duct came out (clearly with a performer inside) and another, slightly narrower tube came on as well.  These two then “got to know each other” with a bit of mildly pornographic dancing (well the most pornographic dancing 2 tubes can do) and then headed off stage.  Shortly to be replaced by a tiny version, clearly the baby, inching its way across stage front.  This led to a bizarre piece of puppetry and singing and dance which just seemed wrong to me.

The gloomy and worrying soundtrack vanished into a mess of Bohemian Rhapsody and various classical pieces all mashed up together.  The puppetry wasn’t that hot either, poor considering they only had to manipulate a couple of tubes.

And the mood was gone and they never really got it back.

But there were some perfectly decent set pieces.  There was a nice bit with a huge inflatable man (made from balloons).  And some audience participation with some bouncy balloon stuff (not as fun as Slava’s though).

But the main entertainment for me was just watching the sheer amount of stuff not working properly.  At one point they fired bits of foil into the crowd but loads got stuck in a lighting rig.  Another bit was using a huge sheet of foil.  This tore twice and then got stuck in the same lighting rig.  Comedy gold it was.

An audience volunteer came up at one point.  He was apparently wrapped in foil and then eaten by a giant duct.  Shame was that it was clear that he’d gone before they finished wrapping him and then when he was surrounded by dancing ducts (yes that is as odd as it sounds) the figure that was supposed to be him was standing stock still; clearly a fake as it wasn’t moving a muscle, not even breathing.  But then the finale of that little piece was done in the dark but you could still see a stagehand moving around (ironic really).  Really poorly done bit of stage magic.  And the killer was that the guy never re-appeared.  So it wasn’t even the classic disappear - re-appear trick.  He just vanished and was never referred back to again.

More stuff didn’t physically work (a cannon failed to shoot its load into the crowd).  Other stuff broke (one tube got caught on a light fitting and, alloyed with the dancer not noticing for a while, it unravelled).  At one point 4 performers just had to stand and wait for a tube to drop down from the roof while managing to stand in the right place to end up inside said tube.  3 of the 4 managed this leaving the last to scrabble somewhat to get in hers - very ungainly and a bad place to miss your trick.  Just poor at times.

But the real turd on the wedding cake was an utterly pointless catwalk section.  For reasons known only to themselves the cast stopped doing the inventive stuff with tubes and props and wandered onto stage with a variety of sub-”Buck Roger’s in the 25th Century” “futuristic” outfits, posed for a bit then wandered off.  The ultimate outfit was some woman dolled up like a tall ship complete with rigging and sails - awful.  The naked bloke wearing a tube was quite entertaining though.

But even that wasn’t the worst of this bit.  Towards the finale of this catwalk was a tanned bloke (one might say he was bronzed) coming on with a really obvious “this is mine, isn’t it ace?” face.  Completely out of place with the rest of the show and as far as I can tell this whole section was included just to show off some 6th form “fashion” ideas.  Truly terrible interlude.  It took a brass neck to dare to put this bit in.

It may sound like I’ve not enjoyed this show.  That’s not true.  I had a massive smile on my face through a lot of it, the rubbish didn’t really tarnish the event too much.  The catwalk bit sorely tested my patience but otherwise the exuberance of the piece made up for some of the apparently amateur preparation.  And the mistakes themselves were funny enough to compensate for their being there.

In all if I’d paid full price then I’d be annoyed now.  As it is though, for a fiver it was definitely worth the trip.  (Tom’s discount meant our one ticket cost seven-tin pounds).

No circus, nothing like Stomp, but nothing like I’ve seen before.

Paying for parking was a pain though as the machine wouldn’t accept any coppers.

Then we came home only to find that the ^**&ing Highways Agency had closed off the junction 21 exit without bothering to tell anyone before J22 meaning I (and no doubt plenty of others) had to drive the 20 mile round trip to get back to the North bound junction.  Bastards!  I shall be writing a very angry letter tomorrow wondering if they’ll reimburse the £5 worth of petrol it cost me.

Permalink