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Brighton Fringe 2012

Rainbow Ride

Shortcut Productions

Genre: Musical Theatre

Venue:

 The Warren

Festival:


Low Down

This show is billed as a " multimedia music/dance/song and colour journey through the seven hues of the rainbow. With Music by original Cockney Rebel Milton Reame James.

Review

This is 45 minutes of projected image and video, music, dance, comedy, poetry and physical theatre. We explore the colours of the rainbow in a sometimes bizarre piece bordering on pop performance art.

 
I was reminded a bit of a Robert Calvert gig in the ’80s. Indeed the sometimes psychedelic background and dancing was reminiscent of Hawkwind before they became a tribute band to themselves.
 
At one point I thought this was a piece of anti-theatre until it began to find a pattern that actually became a song, dance and poetry act. There’s plenty of visual variety in a piece that often seems an occasion for a musical backdrop that ranges from psychedelia through techno-medieval.
 
Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow. Orange, Red.  Rainbow Ride is a narrative-less blend of music, poetry, media and movement, with a hint of bizarre comedy and clowning. It’s goonish in places and certainly surreal. But there is intelligent design here that ranges the planets, the zodiac and our mundane humane reality.
 
I can imagine people hating it and also disliking its style. But they can sing, they can dance and they apply their skill to a bit of performance art that I remember being the staple of occupied-building-cum-arts-venues in former iron curtained countries. It actually feels a bit dated but it is worth a look if you want to see something with a spirit of experimentation at its heart.
 
The  novelty of the  format doesn’t hold it’s own weight entirely for the length of the piece and some of the physicality is a bit Ill-defined, cliched and in need of a better lighting design. The essential conceit holds good though throughout the 45 minutes – we have an interplay between words of cosmic import and the banality of earth normality.
 
Personally I really enjoyed it and warmed to both performers. The show has a unique charm and a bunch of teasingly hidden motives.
 
And then it shifts again. Lights come up and we have a fading star playing an old favourite  with a guitar. A song and it’s as out of place as its an intriguing change from what went before.
 
I also enjoyed the spirit of the show and it’s playful meandering through its material. Well worth a look.

Published