Wednesday, June 19, 2002
Theatrical Review: Blast! “Um, Where Was the Piano?”
Tonight we headed out to The Hummingbird Centre to go see Blast! Think of a marching band doing a workout in a gym and you've pretty much got the idea of the show.
Some reviewers likened it to Riverdance. I couldn't help wondering during the whether or they followed Riverdance's unfortunate lead of pre-recorded material being played during the show. While I couldn't be sure that the music wasn't at least partially recorded I found it disconcerting that not only was the music amplified, it was also "treated" with artificial echoes and odd timbres that sounded artificial. I don't really doubt that most of it was real, but the amplification (of horns and drums? Why?) greatly reduced the "presence" of where the sound was coming from, which always led me the question how "real" the sound was. As for the title of this review, Erika swears she could see a keyboard on stage in one of the instrumental "cubicals" but I never saw it, leading me to think more than a little bit of this show was pre-recorded.
Couldn't help thinking about the curious musical genealogy behind the show: Einsturzende Neubauten to Stomp to this. I haven't seen (nor really intend to see) Riverdance, though the music and choreography in Blast! is very modern. Other than the odd traditional tune, the music from Blast! while enjoyable, was completely forgettable. (We got to the Centre early and I suggested to Erika that she buy the music CD, but it didn't take long into the performance before I realized that we'd probably never listen to it. Erika knew this of course. I'm glad my wife is often more sensible than me. ;-)
Blast! revolves around the thematic idea about the "feel" of colours. Okay, you can pretty much dispense with the theme, though the red section (the starter, opening with a rousing rendition of Bolero) and blue (blues-inspired, featuring a trumpeter playing a tune while standing on a chair suspended half-way to the ceiling. The rest is just unabashed exuberance with a vague theme tacked on.
The best parts for me were the scenes involving horn-play. The crowd pleasers were the drummers/percussionists, but the most impressive were the horns, especially when going through their rhythmic choreography (keeping tonally perfect while doing what they do is a real accomplishment, whereas the drumming is pure hot-doggery. For me, I much preferred the music and its presentation by the players over that the of the flag-wavers and marching-rifle twirlers who were also on stage -- they harkens back to the "roots" of the marching band numbers the show was inspired by, but after a while I just found them distracting.
Don't get me wrong -- it was fun. It's just that the things that bugged me about the show kept me from enjoying it more. We were told that it wouldn't have been a good show to take Vanessa to, but they were wrong as we both agreed afterwards that she would have loved it. What 4 year-old wouldn’t get into people running through the aisles with didgeridoos, or the dueling drummers, etc?
Kudos to the theatrical team who got some of the drummers to play during intermission and at the end of the show -- the "encore" was outside in front of the theatre, which helped empty the theatre, fast.
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