Pand 7090

Pand 7090

Every good fringe deserves something wacky, and the five Dutch artists that put this show together have tried very hard to be that thing.  It’s described as part gallery, part shop and part concert. But it’s a shop with no true method of exchange, a gallery you can’t properly observe and a concert that is hard to experience. There are a couple of mic-ed up ice-sculptures dripping away outside, several toy rhinos and Mozart albums sliced up and re-assembled. It is an arranged shambles and as pianist Nora Mulder says, ‘if you are uncomfortable, remember so are we.’ A trombone, guitar, piano, some recorders and various wired-up objects are ranged around the small, colour-coded audience, who stand in a tight huddle in a hot box. In essence this is a contemporary quartet, with music to share and CDs to sell, presenting their work in a different way with a lo-fi aesthetic and some rather self-conscious wackiness. The music is their thing and there is melody and skill in the playing, with nods to Captain Beefheart (The Vacuum Cleaner) and Kurt Schwitters (a cut-up tone poem). It was fun enough, we danced as best we could and I left humming a tune. How much you enjoy this experience is largely down to the audience cohort you are in it with. You will be sharing a limited about of oxygen with them, and you really need to join in and be a bit wacky yourself. Maybe wear a bikini. I’m told that when there are kids in the group (a) you can see more easily and (b) you will join in more fully and find it a joyful half hour. The length of this review is a graphic response to a show that, for an unexplained, perhaps perfectly valid reason, left two thirds of the available performance space unused…

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About Lisa Wolfe

Lisa Wolfe is a freelance theatre producer and project manager of contemporary small-scale work. Companies and people she has supported include: A&E Comedy, Three Score Dance, Pocket Epics, Jennifer Irons,Tim Crouch, Liz Aggiss, Sue MacLaine, Spymonkey and many more. Lisa was Marketing Manager at Brighton Dome and Festival (1989-2001) and has also worked for South East Dance, Chichester Festival Theatre and Company of Angels. She is Marketing Manager for Carousel, learning-disability arts company.