How can you describe Goose Party? They are a band searching for their identity. Not because they don’t have one, but rather, they have too many. During the course of the evening we cycle through country and prog folk, New Romantic, Glam Rock and disco. And that’s just the (fabulous and mad) costumes! The music smashes together genres from the power ballad through blues, soul and electro, often in the same song, with great musicality and atmosphere. If it’s sometimes schizophrenic, each transformation is never less than exhilaratingly joyous.
Goose Party are also the alter-ego band of Fringe darlings (and previous Total Theatre Award Winners), Little Bulb. This is company with a profound instinct for theatre. Music always plays a central role in their work and in this show takes centre stage. Essentially, it’s a gig.
I had a great time and so did the majority of the youthful crowd making up the audience at the end of a Bank Holiday weekend in Pulse, but there were a few baffled faces and disgruntled customers and, yes, a certain amount of onstage faff. There’s a theatrical frame to this performance, both in its festival context and implied in its hunt for identity, and it would only take a light touch of stagecraft, a little awareness of the theatre in your performance as a whole, to deliver it. Come on Little Bulb, we know you have it in you – now, make this a show as mad and brilliant as the music.