Fuerzabruta - Edinburgh Fringe
Sep. 1st, 2007 08:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhythmaningOne of the must-see shows of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe has been Fuerzabruta. Fuerzabruta - brute force. I love physical theatre. So I reckoned I ought to go and see it. It just sounded like if I didn’t, I’d regret it.
I queued for over an hour to get a ticket, and then they made us stand in aholding pen lounge, where they asked us to queue so more to buy tokens to queue some more to buy drinks. Strangely, I decided not to buy a drink.
Whilst we waited, they played loud music. It was crowded. Not my favourite situation.
Then they let us in to this large, high tent. The music was louder, pounding away. The air was full of fog and smoke. The tent was full of lights and gantries and scaffolding. They herded us in. There were no chairs – it was a promenade performance.
The air of expectation was similar to the feeling a crowd gets before a gig.
The lights went down. A disembodied voice asked us to switch off our phones and not to use cigarette lighters or flash photography. (This last I took as an invitation: it meant photography without a flash was fine. And I remembered I had my little pocket camera with me…)
And then to cheers from the audience – much more like a rock crowd than a theatre audience (and this wasn’t much like a theatre, either) – the show started.
It lasted an hour, and it was quite spectacular. There was a lot of running; and a lot of music – loud, thumping rave music. (OK, I’ve never been to a rave, but this is what I think it was like.) And lots of smashing things: running through wall, running along corridors – all done on a conveyor belt, so the props went by as the cast walked on the spot.
There was flying, too – a lot of flying. In a small box, a woman swan and ran, causing the box to rotate, whilst in the air below her a man span around.
A wall of foil, suspended in the air, spinning around as two actors clambered around; and then the foil collapsed, like a blown-down tent.
Two women chased each other around the outer walls, bouncing off the walls high over the audience. The walls foil-like, billowing out. They flew around, tumbling, spinning.
All the while, the music, the smoke, the fog machine spraying over the audience. The lighting was dark, moody – intense spotlights on one part of the auditorium only.
The highlight was the pool, suspended above the audience, made of transparent plastic. At first it was like a 1970s wave machine, tipping one way and then the other; and tipping four swimmers with it, from one end of the pool to the other. The pool was lowered until it was just above the heads of the audience. The swimmers running, jumping, diving onto the plastic floor, sliding along the bottom of the pool.
One moment of pure beauty was when one of the swimmers slowly moved around, the water following her as she depressed the floor of the pool. She set up standing waves in the water, the shadows of the ripples moving over the audience. And then all the swimmers were jumping and hitting the floor, pounding to the rhythm of the music.
One of the actors became a dj, wearing a white wig for the purpose. (No idea why.) The theatre became a club, the hard-core fans bouncing in the middle – I stayed right on the periphery, happier to watch than take part.
It was an amazing show, intense, powerful, spectacular; it looked incredible, and I saw things I probably won’t see again. The music and the action – especially the swimmers in the pool and the acrobats flying around the walls – made it a very sexy show, too.
But it was ultimately pretty vacuous. I am really, really glad I saw it; and whilst it was the most expensive show I have seen for a long, long time, it was most certainly worth it. But aside from the performance, there wasn’t anything there: lots of great, physical ideas, but little holding it together.
I did think it was brilliant. The way it was put together, the skill in both the performers and the crew – who shepherded the audience around, and made sure the actors didn’t injure themselves or the audience – was tremendous. It was intensely physical – it looked like very hard work, and I can’t see how the performers could do that night after night – let alone the two performances they did most nights.
I couldn’t help imagining the director and the producer sitting together and thinking this up: what could be the most impossible things to do - run through walls? fly around the auditorium? suspend a swimming pool over the audience?
And I couldn’t help but think that they would have one hell of a cast party, too.
I queued for over an hour to get a ticket, and then they made us stand in a
Whilst we waited, they played loud music. It was crowded. Not my favourite situation.
Then they let us in to this large, high tent. The music was louder, pounding away. The air was full of fog and smoke. The tent was full of lights and gantries and scaffolding. They herded us in. There were no chairs – it was a promenade performance.
The air of expectation was similar to the feeling a crowd gets before a gig.
The lights went down. A disembodied voice asked us to switch off our phones and not to use cigarette lighters or flash photography. (This last I took as an invitation: it meant photography without a flash was fine. And I remembered I had my little pocket camera with me…)
And then to cheers from the audience – much more like a rock crowd than a theatre audience (and this wasn’t much like a theatre, either) – the show started.
It lasted an hour, and it was quite spectacular. There was a lot of running; and a lot of music – loud, thumping rave music. (OK, I’ve never been to a rave, but this is what I think it was like.) And lots of smashing things: running through wall, running along corridors – all done on a conveyor belt, so the props went by as the cast walked on the spot.
There was flying, too – a lot of flying. In a small box, a woman swan and ran, causing the box to rotate, whilst in the air below her a man span around.
A wall of foil, suspended in the air, spinning around as two actors clambered around; and then the foil collapsed, like a blown-down tent.
Two women chased each other around the outer walls, bouncing off the walls high over the audience. The walls foil-like, billowing out. They flew around, tumbling, spinning.
All the while, the music, the smoke, the fog machine spraying over the audience. The lighting was dark, moody – intense spotlights on one part of the auditorium only.
The highlight was the pool, suspended above the audience, made of transparent plastic. At first it was like a 1970s wave machine, tipping one way and then the other; and tipping four swimmers with it, from one end of the pool to the other. The pool was lowered until it was just above the heads of the audience. The swimmers running, jumping, diving onto the plastic floor, sliding along the bottom of the pool.
One moment of pure beauty was when one of the swimmers slowly moved around, the water following her as she depressed the floor of the pool. She set up standing waves in the water, the shadows of the ripples moving over the audience. And then all the swimmers were jumping and hitting the floor, pounding to the rhythm of the music.
One of the actors became a dj, wearing a white wig for the purpose. (No idea why.) The theatre became a club, the hard-core fans bouncing in the middle – I stayed right on the periphery, happier to watch than take part.
It was an amazing show, intense, powerful, spectacular; it looked incredible, and I saw things I probably won’t see again. The music and the action – especially the swimmers in the pool and the acrobats flying around the walls – made it a very sexy show, too.
But it was ultimately pretty vacuous. I am really, really glad I saw it; and whilst it was the most expensive show I have seen for a long, long time, it was most certainly worth it. But aside from the performance, there wasn’t anything there: lots of great, physical ideas, but little holding it together.
I did think it was brilliant. The way it was put together, the skill in both the performers and the crew – who shepherded the audience around, and made sure the actors didn’t injure themselves or the audience – was tremendous. It was intensely physical – it looked like very hard work, and I can’t see how the performers could do that night after night – let alone the two performances they did most nights.
I couldn’t help imagining the director and the producer sitting together and thinking this up: what could be the most impossible things to do - run through walls? fly around the auditorium? suspend a swimming pool over the audience?
And I couldn’t help but think that they would have one hell of a cast party, too.