There is no valid word to describe this performance you can see at the Theatre Alfieri. Maybe it doesn’t exist, because the show appears as a combination of too many things contemporaneously, confusing and impressive, delicate, sensual, aggressive.

The first objects that come forward on the stage, making noises to call the audience’s attention, are eight brooms, that almost imply: “ehi, that is life; be born and start working, ’understand?”. Sometimes we do need rude awakenings, though, especially if they end up taking us into a different reality, which is not a cosy kitchen where a granny bakes an apple pie and the warmness of the oven makes us feel protected.

Weird but not uncomfortable. Over there the world is a place where rhythm finds its right collocation through an exact balance between silence and meaningless sounds. Not for deaf equilibrists walking on a wire two metres from the ground, but for whoever wants to experiment new sensations in one’s ears, curiously looking for a hidden music.

The unconventional room fills itself with any -possible or improbable- daily experience: mute gags, applauses, fights, whirling images, acrobatic dances, tip-tap. Lively grown children trample on the floor, stamping their feet around to express anger, joy, obstinacy, and the vortex of actions and emotions absorbs anything: heavy steps on dustbin shoes, sinks hung to the neck and used as drums, chock floating in the air, hands playing chair strings, newspapers matches pipes plungers that speak, and not with a human voice: that is the voice of the kitchen.

Well, actually there is no real word to define this stuff, “STOMP”.

STOMP

Created and directed by Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas

Teatro Alfieri

Piazza Solferino, 2 – Torino

Tel. 011 5623800

Inizio spettacolo: h. 20.45 (domen. h 15.30) dal 27/04 al 2/5/2004.

di Simona Margarino