|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
Also this issue: God Is in the Details Black Power Players Munakata Shiko Turning Point Send in the Clowns |
|
|
|
|
 |
|||||||||
July 25-31, 2002
theater
 bang on the drum all day: (L-R) Blast!’s Aaron Guidry and NIck Angelis. Photo By: joan marcus |
|
BLAST! Through Aug. 4, Forrest Theatre, 1114 Walnut St., 800-447-7400
They’re blasting the brass. They’re banging the drums. They’re flinging the flags.
Blast! is a percussion spectacle, huge and colorful and loud. Created from an award-winning drum-and-bugle corps, Star of Indiana, and transformed by James Mason into a Tony-award winning show, Blast! features 54 clean-cut young people performing with high precision. The audience loved it.
My companion for the evening was a former drum majorette who became my authority on what is "corps," and this was definitely "corps" to the max. Usually corps competitions take place on football fields, so there is, obviously, much more space than on a stage. The scaling down, as well as the flamboyant use of lighting and the ditching of military-style costumes, are some of the changes made from the high school version of this "activity," as it is called.
The most dazzling aspect of the performance is the expertise. Nobody stumbles, drops anything, misses a beat -- when you're twirling fluorescent poles in the dark, there is simply no room for error. The drummers, especially when dueling, are terrific. There are drums of every size and horns of every shape, including the Australian tubes called didgeridoos. Much to my disappointment, they didn't play any marches -- apparently John Philip Sousa is considered passé in advanced corps circles -- but instead gave us Ravel's "Bolero" and a big finale, "Malaguena," featuring flugelhorn.
The choreography struck me as hilarious: hokey, kitschy, based on running around in formation with New Age gestures while people sing "ooooh" -- as if Busby Berkeley had whipped a Hare Krishna group into shape. The energy is high, the smiling faces self-satisfied, while the so-called jam sessions, like the sidewalk aftershow and the contests between performers, are all obviously contrived. There's a big difference between watching kids giving their all for an afterschool obsession in a statewide competition and watching an international touring company at $75 bucks a pop.
This is a sui generis show -- a thing like nothing else -- and for me it lacked the wit of STOMP and the testosterone of Tap Dogs, so I didn't enjoy it as much as most everybody else seemed to. But then again, I wasn't a drum majorette back in the day.
