★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. After Dark Theatre. The Peacock, Gluttony. 18 Feb 2023
One day in 1982 a group of young men and women met on the studio lot to begin filming for Michael Jackson’s iconic long-form video release Thriller.
Some 41 years later at the Adelaide Fringe Festival six young men and women gathered to recreate the scene, or so it seems. Four men, two women, all muscled and taut of body, on a stage dressed with black 44 gallon drums. A connection was made: bodies, barrels. It was an homage to Adelaide’s peculiar genius for inflicting pain upon the national psyche.
They – the performers – are gritty and slightly edgy, at home in the alley. In any event, Barbaroi (which it is claimed is the Greek word for ‘barbarian’, so why did they not just call the performance by that name?) begins well enough, building through the muscular gymnastics of a youth theatre ensemble who were easily able to deal with tumbles and falls and flips and spins. The rope routine of a single young women with one gleaming green eye was a standout, and it seemed this synthesis of youth theatre and circus gymnastics was following a reasonably well developed path.
Cutting, flashing and sometimes unreasonable lighting attacks the senses, already assaulted by loud and percussive music which seeks to inflict – in places – an industrial setting upon the brain, of a pattern developed and exploited by the likes of Nine Inch Nails and Faith No More and refined through the subsequent decades of live performance soundtrack which demands repetitive and pulsating ‘cutting edge’ scores.
So far, so good, but just when you think it’s safe to dismiss them as just another troupe you realise this may well be the real thing. There is no letup in their application, in their power and refinement, and it seems entirely possible the six are forcing their bodies to do more than seems fair.
It is about an application of force, exemplified by a young man who acts maliciously, strutting and pushing, provoking and leering, smiling as he rolls and tumbles, and cajoles and pushes. Even in manufactured violence within a theatrical setting it is a remarkable display of sang froid, perfectly at home within the idea of what the Fringe Festival meant when it first began. This is high quality performance art.
Alex Wheaton
When: 18 Feb to 19 Mar
Where: The Peacock, Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
