After seeing STOMP on stage, many adjectives come to mind; awesome, invigorating, funny and contagious to name just a few.
Set in a bleak, industrial urban landscape, complete with hub caps, old tyres and paint tins, eight performers, dressed down suitably to their environment, appear with brooms as street sweepers gradually wowing the audience with extraordinary rhythms and sounds that you’d never expect from such a domestic prop. The dynamic of sound and movement is done with razor sharp timing and choreography.
What follows is an amazing array of percussion props including paint cans tossed around and hit with complex rhythms, a shopping trolley frolic and inflated monster truck inner tubes worn around waists and used as pounding drum kits.
These feats of precision are all interspersed with humorous, silent moments of subtle and easy pantomime from the performers, teasing the audience, the power of their interplay reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin – very small gestures can create very big laughs.
Refreshingly, there are no words, bar the odd ‘Mr Bean-like’ hello, as the cast first appear and greet each other. When there is the odd grunt or exclamation, it is truly noticed. The show, being so infectious, has the audience clicking, tapping and clapping with every opportunity.
STOMP was first conceived in 1991 at the Edinburgh Festival and, with its escalating success, is in its 11th year in London’s West End and 20th year on Broadway, the record breaking longest running show at the Orpheum Theatre. It has played to over 15 million people in 50 countries across 5 continents.
STOMP gave an impressive performance at the Closing Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics, gathering 40 of its worldwide performers. The show is also currently playing in the UK, US, throughout Europe and South America as well as Australia.
STOMP is a gem. Catch it if you can. It plays from September 10th to September 15th at the Theatre Royal in Sydney, the final leg of its Australian tour.