Back With A Spectular Bang!

A great return to the stage for Forced Entertainment!

I have to be very honest and say that I was not entirely won over by Forced Entertainment's last show 'Spectular' in October 2008 at the Nuffield Theatre, however thats not to say I have lost any admiration or respect for Forced Entertainment because as a stable of experimental theatre in Britain and around the world, for 25 years and on the evidence of their current show 'The Thrill of It' they show how to construct and hold an audience hooked in a full show full of music, dance, performance, stand up and comedy.

The show lasts an hour and 45 minutes, which on paper sounds like a long time but honestly it doesn't feel like that at all. The show does what all great entertainment does takes you away from your day to routine and makes you forget about the world outside the theatre space.

Creating a large ensemble piece is of course hard, but the chemistry between Thomas Conway, Amit Hadari, Phil Hayes, Jerry Killick, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, Terry O'Connor and John Rowley holds the performance together. Splitting between exchanges between all females and all males. The Matching outfits held the performers together in white and red, however each performer had there own traits such as not being able to come up with something funny from listing 'funny fruit'. The mixture of direct address and comedy broke up the performance and kept the audience interested.

The only issue I personally had but by no means a reflection of the whole audience nor the piece as a whole was the direct address of being told 'At this point in the evening', I want to have the opportunties to make my mind up about the performance and gather my own thoughts about the performance. As I say this is just a matter of personal opinion and I don't want to be overly critical of this small thing because it is a personal opinion, and each and every opinion is different.

I enjoyed the commical interchanges and the scary moment where people in the audience thought they would be picked out as the love interest of some of the male performers. The vocal treatment of the performers voices (generic deep voices for the male and high pitched for the female performers) was a lovely addition and a chilish like entertainment. As artistic director Tim Etchells remarks "There's a set of binaries you get into around constructed masculinity, constructed feminity. I think tangling with these binaries became one of the organising principles of the work".

My final thought is, Where did the music come from? Because I would really like some of it, Thanks!

Great Show!.

http://www.forcedentertainment.com/page/3009/About+Us+ - Forced Entertainment online.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d02U0u_1sk - Video Trailer for the Show