Since those early days, creators and co-directors Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas have developed a unique, universal language of rhythm, theatre, comedy and dance. To date, it has set feet stamping, fingers drumming, adrenalin rushing and feel-good flooding through audiences totalling 14 million across 43 countries.
Now, after an astonishing 6 years in the West End, STOMP unveils a revamped show, inspired by their large-scale Las Vegas version, STOMP OUT LOUD. New music and choreography join a fresh array of ordinarily mundane objects, onto which the cast work their musical magic. Huge, ribbed tubes, previously used for recycling fluorescent lights, are themselves recycled into outsized Guiros, a Latin American percussion instrument, played by scraping the ridged sides with a stick.
In one of two spectacular new routines, paint cans are tossed between the performers, as they simultaneously build an astonishingly complex rhythm over every surface of the airborne cans. With the emphasis very much on ‘spectacular’, the Stompers are also joined by inflated monster truck inner tubes, here strapped around their waists to create both a dance of bobbing, whirling rubber skirts and pounding, portable drum kits: the ultimate redefinition of ‘surround sound’.
Still remaining is STOMP’S signature high-octane meeting of slick choreography, tight ensemble work, industrial percussion and a narrative of anarchic clowning; as the irrepressible troupe of eight turn brooms into soft shoe partners, clapping into intricate conversations and water cooler bottles into sophisticated instruments. A row of folding chairs are straddled, slid, slammed and slapped into rhythmic submission. It is at once primal and urbane, leaving no percussive potential – of object, body or action – unexploited. And all underpinned by a childish delight in making serious noise.
The whole hurtles towards a brilliantly reworked climax - a showstopper in every sense - as a crackling carnival of leaping, spinning, skidding and pounding performers vent their inexhaustible energies on an unsuspecting orchestra of metal dustbins, bin lids, tubs and water butts. Joyous, thumping, exhilarating bliss for all involved … except the bins!
STOMP has been to South Africa before, playing at the Grahamstown Festival and at the Standard Bank Arena in Johannesburg in 1999 and 2000 respectively. In December 2006 Pieter Toerien brought the show to Cape Town for the first time, where it played to standing ovations throughout the entire run.
