★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Head First Acrobats. The Vault, Fool’s Paradise. 27 Feb 2024
Money, money, money. The audience is showered with the stuff – oh that it were real! Still, we’re easily distracted by other shiny things as the cowboys strut their stuff in this Railed wild west bar-room. To the sweet banjo grind of Hugo’s 99 Problems, a testosterone storm explodes on stage as the boys start drinking, carousing, fighting and producing some great acrobatic work.
This is the crew who also brought us Godz, and its ‘brother’ show does not disappoint. While Railed also features juggling, the spinning wheel and some fine acrobatics, it takes things up a notch and at the same time camps it up outrageously. There’s some very sexy horse action: an R-rated tryst with a unicorn (!) and a pommel horse exhibition that was worth the price of admission. The floor gymnastics, while a little hard to see on the raised stage, were executed with great timing, and a lot of laughs. There’s a bottles-on-the-bar routine that just has one waiting for the smashing of glass – and it doesn’t happen!
This show is knock-down drag-‘em-out funny. The slo-mo fight scene is a classic, while the card trick becomes a recurring motif between the aerial ropes, the see-saw, the chair tower and the flying knives. Yep, this has it all, including an outstandingly curated music soundtrack: Reignwolf’s Are You Satisfied; Ginuwine’s Pony and The Black Key’s Lonely Boy amongst them.
The laughs come thick and fast, but never obscure the remarkable physical talents of this cast; the combination of hilarity and skill is a killer – prepare to be slayed – or is that giving away the ending?
Arna Eyers-White
When: 27 Feb to 17 Mar
Where: The Vault, Fool’s Paradise
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
