Follow the light, the light will guide you

Fuerzabruta at the Roundhouse in Camden, is an Argentine production which perfectly suits the newly revamped home of crusty rock concerts of yore. The show traps its audience in a ring of curtains and herds them about in shuffling groups, their movements dictated by the action taking place overhead and all around them. As a treadmill barges in from a corner a lone spotlight picks out our everyman hero of the day, trudging endlessly towards death/epiphany as all manner of obstacles hurtle towards him (including some people who looked like they'd just stumbled off the platform at Chalk Farm station). This poor fella gets shot in the back but bravely soldiers on, runs like the clappers for a bit, gets bludgeoned by a wall of boxes, gets rained on, gets randomly bumped into by those rude tube people again, gets shot again, keeps going, holy shit, it's like a metaphor for, like, life! This is all laying it on a bit thick but fortunately he manages to run off before someone else shoots him (namely me). We are now surrounded again, only this time by a massive curtain of tinfoil. Two nimble young gels in flimsy frocks dash around at ceiling height across this billowing silver surface, like a human wall of death, rolling over each other and screaming like banshees. My metaphor gland struggles to process this bit, but gives up as we are once again shuffled around by frantic backstage crew all sporting elaborate head mics, in order to make way for what looks like a giant 50p piece that floats down into the middle of the space. On either side of this 'coin' are a man and a woman, who set up a rhythm by hurling themselves from side to side which sets the entire structure rotating madly. This has the knock on effect of driving them both utterly insane, and they jabber and hoot at the crowd like Tourettes infected howler monkeys. Is this the paradoxical dichotomy of man and woman, or has the cast been laying into BSE infected Argentine beef? We will never know as the 50p is whisked away and replaced by a swimming pool that covers the entire crowd. The floor of this pool is made of some indestructible transparent plastic allowing us to view four scantily clad women as they perform an x-rated Esther Williams piece in a garishly illuminated cascade of water. I find myself becoming oddly aroused by all this frolicking, and am somewhat disturbed when they lower the entire structure down to head height allowing the audience to prod and paw at the nubile bodies a mere membrane away from them. The odd idiot takes it too far and has to be chastised by the roaming stage crew, as the pool sails back up into the rafters and...oh no, it's that poor running sod again, forced back into action on his eternal treadmill, you vicious Argie bastards, let him be! I too am calmed by a circling crew person, who assures me the actor is extremely fit and has been doing the show for months, like that's supposed to make me feel better. The whole event peters out suddenly in a rather anticlimactic fashion and we find ourselves abandoned by cast and crew to make our way out or linger on the floor while their DJ bashed off (no Spencer, not that sort of bashing off) a few tribal choons to prepare us for the world outside. Anyone familiar with the work of Grotowski would know this sort of thing was all done with equal fervour in Poland in the fifties and sixties (don't want to come over all poncy like, it's a miracle I remember anything from four years of speech n' drama). I can't say I was utterly blown away by the whole thing, but I recommend people check it out, just for the spinning 50p and the nekkid chicas in the pool, which strangely enough made it all worthwhile!

B