The Revolver Club
Backstage Social Club, Christchurch Arts Centre
REVIEW: Cabaret comes in many forms.
In Christchurch this week, you can either see LIMBO – a glitzy, glamorous and highly polished piece of circus cabaret – or, just a few blocks away, you can see a new piece of circus cabaret with a slightly shaggier vibe.
Christchurch performer Shay Horay in rehearsal for his new show Revolver which opened on Thursday as part of the Bread & Circus festival.
The Revolver Show is a new creation from Christchurch performers Shay Horay and Pascal Ackermann. It is a shaggy and overstuffed enterprise, but it is also funny, endearing and surprising.
Horay is host for the evening, performing in character as Richard Rhythm, a vaguely eastern European old rocker who drives a cab in Ashburton when he isn't hosting slightly warped cabaret circus shows.
Rhythm introduces a series of acts, including Imogen Stone, who steals the show with a dazzling aerial circus rope act and an excellent comic routine featuring a box of matches and a bottle of wine. He also introduces brothers Zane and Degge Jarvie, who perform an incredibly impressive and technical club juggling routine that builds to a natural crescendo, and Ackermann, who surprises with a strange form of explicit body puppetry.
Christchurch musician Jody Lloyd also hovers unnecessarily above proceedings as DJ Moneybagwan.
All this unfolds on a tiered stage with a circular revolving platform at one end of a slim catwalk that is wound by a hand crank at the other end. The audience wraps around this unique stage to create an intense and intimate atmosphere in the relatively small confines of the Backstage Social Club in the Christchurch Arts Centre. To add to the already busy proceedings, there are also three cocktail bars around the edge of the audience that have a competition to see who can sell the most of their special drinks.
As you can probably tell, this is not a show that is short on ideas.
But this bounty of invention can sometimes make the show feel a little too busy and unfocused. The 90-minute running time, including a 10-minute interval, can feel a little long and patchy.
The show will undoubtedly get sharper and clearer as it settles in and tightens up, but it could easily be streamlined by cutting a few of the weaker routines.
But, while it may feel a little fuzzy in places, the energy and invention poured into this strange piece of circus cabaret makes for a fun night out.
I just think there is a brighter and sharper show in there still waiting to be found.
The Revolver Club runs until January 27 and then from January 31 to February 3.