Hercules by New Art Club
24 July 15:
I’m writing this between Hercules shows at the Peacock Theatre in London. These are our penultimate performances - only one more stop on the tour, and it’s been a delight throughout. I first saw New Art Club in 2006, at a Home live art event in the Sussex countryside. Tom Roden & Pete Shenton talked about dance while they danced, talked about moving while they moved, made jokes and danced while they joked, and were very, very funny. Contemporary dance and comedy is a combination I had never experienced before, had never even thought of, but it worked. You would laugh with the rational side of your brain, and then stop laughing and feel with the other part of your brain. Not sure what you call the part that’s stimulated by dance - the kinaesthetic? the spacial? Anyway, it’s a great combination.
In 2013, I got the chance to work with Tom - we were both engaged to work an outdoor dance show about birdwatchers that strangely transform into birds - the wonderful Nerdy Birdies. I did the sound design, Tom did the choreography, and I learned he’s just as funny in life - friendly, down to earth, inclusive, irreverent. When I told him I thought New Art Club were fantastic, he seemed surprised that anyone even knew about them, which is ridiculous since they’ve won awards, showed at Edinburgh, toured the world…
So last year I got a mail from Tom asking if I wanted to skype with him & Pete about a their most ambitious show yet - a midscale touring family dance cabaret of the Greek epic heroic poem about the twelve labors of Hercules. They needed a musician. I immediately said yes.We have a cast of six - Janine Fletcher & Avis Cockbill (aka The Two Wrongies), the astounding hula hooper Tiina Tuamoto from Finland, me, Tom & Pete, and we’re joined by three groups of dancers/performers local to each venue: kids for the 7-headed hydra, young dancers for the cleaning of the Aegean stables, and a general call for adults to be the crazy man-eating birds. The conceit is that Pete wants to do a cabaret while Tom wants to tell the story through a series of emotionally wrought, yet powerful yet epic poems. Of course the dancing wins, with the eventual participation of everyone in the audience. The show is daft and intelligent - they have to be smart to be able to be this funny - with a blend of physicality, playfulness and sheer joy.Today’s first show had 400 or so people dancing and laughing and playing along. There’s a game that New Art Club use in their shows - the eyes closed, eyes open game - where the audience closes their eyes on a cue, opens them on another cue, after everything on stage has changed. Endless opportunities for a classic comic gag - set up an expectation then close your eyes, everything is rejigged, open your eyes and see your expectations completely up-ended. Very simple, and very effective.
The only hitch for me today came when my nose started to slowly squeeze off my face during my ukulele solo song (I'm dressed as a gadfly with a stinger, antennae and a sponge nose). There was nothing I could do - both my hands were strumming. I thought if I hold still and only move my mouth while I sang - no other part of my face - it might last till the end of the number, but it wasn’t working - I’m singing the verses and all I could think about was, ‘Damn, I just felt it slip a millimeter there’ - ‘Oops there it went another millimeter’ - ‘It’s not going to make it!’ The thing popped off my face right at the clapping break - I caught it in mid air and just kept going. Adele the wardrobe mistress has given me some double-sided toupee tape to use on it tonight…Hercules: a funny show, terrific people, and I get to play the accordion in a toga and the ukulele dressed as a gadfly. What more could you want? Two more shows tomorrow, then in Manchester at the Contact Theatre in October, and then that’s it, alas. See it if you can... We’ve just come to the half so I’m off...