Stomping Until Doomsday (Vaudeville Theatre in general)

Member Name: MALU

Product:	Vaudeville Theatre in general
Date:	21/11/03 (74 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: sensational, brilliant, outstanding

Disadvantages: none

What makes you go out in the first place and then choose a certain play or performance and not another?

When I was in London in July with a group of students my colleague and I decided to take in as many cultural events as possible after our official sightseeing programme. One afternoon we`d been to the Hindu Temple in Neasden, the students had gone back to the city centre and we went to the Indian supermarket nearby. We forgot the time browsing and musing on such profound questions as how long we`d have to live if we wanted to use up a kilo of hot curry powder.

When we finally were on our way back we became nervous, time was running out. We were already too late for the plays starting at 7.30 pm, some plays starting at 8 pm were in theatres too far away, what now? We flicked through Time Out and What`s On and came upon `Stomp`. The description didn't tell us much, my colleague interpreted what she read as a show of tap-dancing men. Tap-dancing men? Why should I pay to see something weird like that? But she talked me round it with the argument ``When it`s in the West End it must be good!`` and that it was in the Vaudeville Theatre on the Strand which we could reach on time if we got off at Charing Cross and ran.

When we arrived out of breath two minutes before the show started, I must have looked completely knocked out because I was offered an OAP`s concession ticket although I am still this side of 60. Ha! I took it, of course.

There was no curtain, the stage showed an inner city slummy backyard of the kind we know from innumerable American films, surprisingly the writings on the walls were all in German! Don`t ask me why, there was nothing else only faintly German in the whole show.

A shabbily dressed man with a broom appeared and started sweeping the stage. After some seconds he started sweeping rhythmically, then other men came looking like garbage collectors and street bums with brooms and swept along with
him. One man turned the broom and began knocking on the floor with the wooden edge a-syncopically, others followed and there was a constant sweeping and knocking, then one of them began stamping his feet, others followed, they all had heavy boots on, the sweeping, knocking and stamping was perfectly coordinated, what the men created was a rhythmic ballet of sound, it became a kind of music. Tap-dancing men, my back bottom!

Many scenes of the kind followed, the objects the six men and two women (they were not always all together on the stage) used were everyday objects like pipes, garbage pail lids, oil drums, wooden tea chests, kitchen sinks, plastic carrier bags, cigarette lighters, water coolers and toilet plungers. We saw a movement of bodies, objects and sounds - no speech, not even a plot.

There is no meaning in the performance, no message, no political connotations, it's just a deafening bombardment of noise which you`d normally run away from, but here it is presented so brilliantly that one can`t be but fascinated.

But no, not all scenes of the 100 minutes performance are an aural attack. The back of the stage is a wall made of trash, mostly parts of cars, hubs and rims, doors, window frames and the like. In one scene two men hang in harnesses suspended from above in front of the wall and move along it, clicking and hammering carefully on the objects producing ethereal sounds which one would normally associate with a porcelain glockenspiel. In another scene one men and the two women sit on a threshold poking in a trash can, they find plastic bags, blow them up and rub them gently with their fingers producing very soft sounds, suddenly there`s romance in the backyard.

Londoners are spoilt, why should they react enthusiastically when a performance is brilliant? They`re used to getting only the very best in all fields, I`ve watched them applaud politely after plays which would pull Continental European audiences from thei
r seats and behave like mad. STOMP was the first performance I saw which made the audience behave `continentally`, people shouted, cheered, hoorayed, whistled, howled! (or maybe there were many foreigners present?)

STOMP was created in Brighton in 1991 by Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas, it then went to London's Bloomsbury Theatre and the Assembly Rooms at Edinburgh, where it became the Guardian?s `Critic`s Choice` and won the Daily Express `Best of the Fringe` reward. Between 1991 and 1994 the original cast of STOMP toured around the world, an expanded version involving up to 30 players performed at the Acropolis in Athens and at the Royal Festival hall in London where it broke all box office records.

In 1994 the first American cast was formed, in 1995 two more American productions were created which have been touring the US to this day. In 1997 a fifth STOMP company was formed in the UK and has consistently toured the world ever since. STOMP has played to eight million people in 31 countries.

`The international hit performance-dance rhythm meisters` started in the Vaudeville in September 2002, the closing is `open-ended` according to the programme. Do you know why there are so many musicals in London running for ages? London is visited by millions of tourists, not all of them speak good English and could follow a play, so what do they choose on their evening out? Right, a musical. For STOMP not even basic English is necessary, so I don`t really know why it shouldn`t run until Doomsday. I hope to be in London again in 2005 and although my time is very limited there I know I`ll go to see STOMP another time!

Performances:
Monday closed
Tuesday to Friday 8 pm
Saturday 3 pm & 8 pm
Sunday 3 pm

Prices
from 15 to 37.50 GBP
for reductions see: www.thisistheatre.com/londonshows/stomp.html

Summary: