Stomp goes flash bang wallop
March 22nd, 2008, 10:05 pm Hobbies Ideas
Clangs and crashes echo from an anonymous warehouse on an industrial estate
near Brighton. Outside, workmen load a lorry with dented buckets, crumpled
street signs and bashed-up oil drums. Inside, another gang in heavy boots
thumps out complex rhythms with wooden poles, rubber tubing and dustbin
lids. But this factory produces neither ironmongery nor woodwork, but new
cast members and stage sets for Stomp, the pigeonhole-unfriendly
percussion-dance-comedy stage show that started as a busking band on
Brighton%26rsquo;s streets 16 years ago. I%26rsquo;m here to have a go, to see what it takes
to be part of this international phenomenon, whose triumphs include a
five-year run in the West End, 13 years in New York and, since last month, a
Las Vegas version in a purpose-built 1,500-seat theatre.
Teaching the recruits is one of the show%26rsquo;s original cast members, Fraser
Morrison, 44, a wiry, smiling Scot with tattooed arms and a pierced ear. On
paper, he and the show%26rsquo;s creators, Steve McNicholas and Luke Cresswell,
should have gone and got proper jobs years ago. The show has few of the
features normally considered necessary for popular success: no celebrity
appearances, no hummable tunes, no titillating costumes, no dialogue, just
eight performers in building-site garb, shaking, banging and tapping rhythms
from a skipful of rubbish, using everything from match-boxes to water-cooler
bottles to, yes, the kitchen sink.
But see the show, and the reason Morrison still has a job is clear. The music
the cast coax from their unlikely instruments is riveting. Starting from a
simple beat %26ndash; a Zippo lighter flicked open, sparked then closed; a broom
swished across the floor and tapped on its side %26ndash; the group add layer upon
layer of sound until the rhythms are so precariously interwoven that one
false move could plunge the whole thing into chaos, as it regularly does
during the rehearsal I attend. Just the intricacy and inventiveness might be
enough to win the show novelty value or popularity with aficionados of
avant-garde music. But on top of that, the cast dance and clown, projecting
exaggerated versions of their personalities, playing out friendships and
petty rivalries and raising audience giggles by questioning the size of each
other%26rsquo;s instruments, giving the show entertainment value as well and
allowing it, more than 10,000 performances in, to carry on drawing in
crowds. Morrison says: Back at the beginning, Luke called me up and said,
%26lsquo;Fancy doing this for three weeks?%26rsquo; Three weeks turned into 16 years %26ndash; the
longest three weeks of my life.
The original cast, who all knew each other from previous performing projects
in Brighton, first took the show to the Edinburgh Festival. When it was a
hit there, they travelled on to any festival we could gatecrash, as
Morrison puts it. There%26rsquo;s no dialogue, so we could go anywhere. And we were
playing arts festivals, music festivals, comedy festivals %26ndash; it snowballed
pretty quickly. In the early days, the cast would visit the local dump to
gather the scrap metal for the set %26ndash; partly for a local feel, but mostly
from necessity, lacking the cash to transport much gear. At least now we
get our oil drums professionally cleaned, says Morrison. Back at the
start, we were doing a show in Ireland and all came off feeling a bit
light-headed and high. Then we saw all this crap, which had come out of the
bottom of the drums we were using, all over the stage %26ndash; we%26rsquo;d been poisoning
ourselves. But it was part of the job.
Related posts
