Edinburgh Fringe 2011
Low Down
Final Fantasy, PSP, Nintendo and many funny game shows are all made in Tokyo. Today, the newest Tokyo Game is brought to the UK by the Body Tights Men from Game Paradise! See our crazy, funny and Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (MXC) involving the audience. Wildly entertaining, inventive, dangerous. The next contender may be you! This is a Non-Verbal performance and perfect for all ages. Using video projection, silly wigs and costumes we will give you an exciting hour.
Review
I like this show, let me make that clear, I like the performers, they have an infectious charm, their obvious delight in being here in front of an Edinburgh audience carries a lot of weight, they are good with the audience, thanking them and even going so far as to personally say goodbye to each and everyone of us at the end of the show.
I saw them last year in a couple of short cabaret spots when they were known as the 3 Ga Ga Heads (a title I love) and was looking forward to a progression on that promise so I settled down to an hour of crazy entertainment and I certainly got that.
The show starts with a lovely piece of cloth animation, a very simple idea beautifully performed, it had the audience clapping along from the start with some precision puppetry. We then moved into a sequence that I have seen before and made me really like this group, its unusual, its inventive and it must be what gave this group their name, they use their all in one morph suits to great effect to create a dazzling and surreal set of images, morphing from one to the other with wit and charm, all set to Brubecks Take 5 sound track. The highpoint of this is the smoke breathing recreation of Godzilla and the frankly beautiful appearance of ET. This is a bunch of committed and seriously skilled performers showing their best and I loved this piece. I found it disturbing that some members of the audience seemed to prefer to watch it on their iphones than in real life but hey, I guess that’s technology for you, interestingly enough, I think this is one show that would actually come across on a phone screen! Maybe they should develop their own GaGa Heads app.
They followed this really strong beginning with a quick sketch based on famous portraits and then they slightly lost me with 2 more sketches that I felt were slightly ill advised, one about farting just didn’t cut the mustard and was followed by a plastic glove on the head routine that every street entertainer has used.
However they won me back with a bizarre ballooning sketch, long balloons shaped like, well, placed in the place of the male appendage, this actually although it doesn’t sound it was quite a charming little routine because of the sound effects and their gentle way with the audience, then a quick homage to a Mime group called Momus from the seventies using Slinkies , an audience participatory Japanese Archery contest, some very strange aliens and a final piece called Hair Tango performed in white suits with black gloves which finally restored my faith and delight in this trio. I thought about this for a while and thought actually I would highly recommend this unusual entertainment go see the Tokyo Game The Body Tights Man Show, I guarantee you’ll find something to delight you in that bag somewhere.
