Fuerza Bruta
Roundhous
The handsome devils of circus, Argentina’s worst-kept theatrical secret and a personal love affair. Fuerza Bruta clatter back into the Roundhouse. This time inflated.
Picture the scene, two young homosexuals exploring the Big Apple for the first time. It’s 2016, President Trump was clambering into the White House and Britain has leapt out of the European Union. Despite that, this 25th birthday trip spirits were high, owning largely to catching the aforementioned company’s final year at the Daryl Roth Theater. Dear reader, can you believe, those bright-eyed homosexuals were my partner and me. Yes, that’s right critics don’t just morph fully formed at 30 in a black turtleneck from an oil well! The show was one, if not THE highlight of the trip. Such is the power of theatre, and so concludes my irrelevant but hopefully charming exposition.
Reeling it back, do you like any of the following? Inflatable props? Swagger-inducing costumes? Gorgeous South Americans? Aerial acrobatics? Water and thumping techno? Well… sadly none are involved. I JOKE. Birthed in 2005 by Diqui James off the back of two previous street theatre companies, this postmodern experiment (fittingly meaning brute force) has come a long way since then.
But how to describe the spinning sprites of FB with more than just a list? Think Cirque du Soleil’s coolier and edgier younger cousin. Blunt fringe, low-rise jeans, chonging on an apple green vape and blasting Charlie XCX. This company has the athleticism and blood-thumping good time of the circus giants but with less the ye-old-big-top vibe. More an industrial rave that happens to have people spinning on a giant globe above your head, or encased in a giant inflatable whale flying over your head, or swinging from a massive crane soaring over your head. Do you see a theme?
14 strong the company are young, dressed in Jacquemus-esq summery zoot suits, hair slicked back, achingly spiffy. They bang drums, dance on a giant treadmill, and cut through the audience (with the help of technical staff) parting us like the red sea before various set pieces. Our heads whip this way and that between the vast arches of the Victorian train turning cavern. Every angle is good, and the sweating bodies of your fellow audience members almost religionise the experience.
Yes, they clearly have some things they like repeating. But don’t we all? A glass box filled with water, a thrashing performer trapped within is a pale imitation of the plastic cover they dragged above the audience in New York. Proceeding to fill this transparent membrane and swim over our heads. Equally, the treadmill sequences that they are so famous for missed the jumping through paper walls, although sassy, and exceptional choreography lighten the disappointment. With less of an overarching theme than their Las Vegas-based relatives, the link seems to be a good time. Which we can all get behind.
Despite worries of creative stagnation, the whole affair is highly technical fun. A new edition is a chamber stretched out to the side, like an aerodynamic tester, in which performers on rotating bike seats fling and flail backward and forwards in the delineated lines of smoke. Mesmerising.
They know how to whip up an audience, the Roundhouse is the ideal venue from the under-the-stars tranquillity of the rooftop bar to the vast height needed for the inflatables. Revving up to a crescendo, 5 performers swing in a tumble suspended from the roof as water descends from the ceiling raining down onto a writhing swamp of partygoers. Considering the mix of glasses and non-glasses wearing attendants this bacchanal of revelry could only be a Fuerza Bruta show. As myself and my partner sway, stiffer and more cynical than our 2016 selves the magic of the company isn’t lost with the subsequent years, only amplified.
This show runs until September the 1st, so grab a ticket soon you silly thing, CLICK HERE
