The stage of The Fabulous Fox Theatre got one hell of a beating two weeks ago. It also hosted musical numbers made up of Zippo lighters, plastic bags and flotation tubes and got a good sweeping by an army of push brooms.
“Stomp,” the worldwide success and percussion-based performance arts show, came to St. Louis during the weekend of April 3, as a part of its national tour, bringing with it a stable of paint cans, trash bins, matches, drum sticks and wooden poles, all used throughout the course of the show to fill the theater with a symphony of sound.
The show opens with an impressive orchestra of push brooms, as the cast slowly makes their way on stage, one-by-one, as they sweep, bang and bash a musical number into being with the aid of only the brooms in their hands and the sand they scatter across the stage. And things rarely let up from there.
In one of the show’s most impressive set pieces, the cast members strap themselves into giant, inflatable inner tubes and beat them with drumsticks to create an impressive rhythmic percussive sound as they march around the stage. In another, the lights are extinguished in the theatre and the cast flicks Zippo lighters on and off, small bursts of illumination that are formed into a melody with the speed and precision that they come to life. It is in this, the use of everyday items to bring a harmony of sound to life, that “Stomp” demonstrates why it has become an international sensation.
When experiencing a show like “Stomp,” there’s a danger of ignoring the complicated and impressively choreographed movements of the performers taking place on stage as your ears are trying to fully appreciate the music that can be composed from the every day. But, if you take a moment to really look, it’s something to behold.
When my eyes strayed from the action on stage, I found myself fascinated by the shadows being cast on the towering, historic walls on each side of the theater by the performers. Amplified to the size of shadowy giants, the image of the cast savagely brandishing drum sticks and dancing in artful precision gave me a different level of appreciation for what it must take to put on a show as physically taxing and logistically challenging as this.
The characters and central idea behind the show, as simple as they are, are deceptively uncomplicated, but the performers and directors behind it have managed to carve out a personality for each of the central figures in the show.
Though there’s nary a line of dialog outside of a rare cough or well-timed grunt of surprise or disgust, the athletic musicians of the every day that fill the stage for the show’s whole running time emerge with differing personalities-the put upon dunce, the off-the-wall improviser, the self-assured bully, et cetera. These characters bring an unexpected element-humor-into a show that’s main concern is the possibility of sound.
As the show comes to a close and the audience is prompted to snap as the last performer slowly backs away into a doorway that’s part of the show’s impressive, looming, industrial set, the audience at the Fox was wound up, wired by the energetic, booming, exciting show that they had just witnessed.
Chances are, the sounds of passing traffic and the clicking of shoes on the pavement never sounded more musical.
For more information about “Stomp,” including more about the show’s history and its current New York and touring casts, visit www.stomponline.com.
More information about the Fox Theatre’s current season and its up-coming slate of shows, including ticket sales and prices, can be found at www.fabulousfox.com.
