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Glory Box Viva La Revolucion

Glory Box La Revolucion doesn’t just push boundaries, it laughs sardonically as it breezes past them.
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Moira Finucane in Glory Box Viva La Revolucion; photo by Jodie Hutchinson.

A bespectacled man in a red velvet jacket rushes around the entrance trying to marshal staff, audience and who knows what else through the Spiegeltent’s narrow entrance. There’s already a buzz in the air and the crowd seems unconcerned with the missing formality of taking their seats. It would not be the last formality to fall by the wayside. Glory Box La Revolucion doesn’t just push boundaries, it laughs sardonically as it breezes past them on route to a phantasmagoria of sensuality, dance, acrobatics and song.

A performance artist friend once told me that the acid test of a performance is that you are left unable to say what the show was about, only what happened. A more fitting descriptor of Glory Box you could not find. In the vain of Carol Churchill’s Love and Information, it is a series of short scenes with no unifying narrative, yet it never feels disjointed. Just the opposite in fact. There is something higher than narrative that makes scenes flow from one to the next. One might call it an energy, a style or even an attitude but whatever it was seemed to pass between performers with a knowing, mischievous glance, as if a secret known only to them.

The secret may remain tightly held but it is comprised in no small part by fearlessness. Costumes were as much the performers’ own skin as the adornments that very rarely obscured. It was a celebration of the body, which made clothing feel more constraint than covering and each performer took the stage with a confidence and vitality that thrilled, dazzled and titillated.

Moira Finucane leads with daring and grace, traversing the full gender spectrum. She owns the stage when she takes it and displays both body-shaking intensity and light comic touch with consummate ease. Rocky Stone, the audacious aerialist, combines theatrics and incredible feats of strength to wow any audience and finishes, or shall we say climaxes, with an act that cannot be repeated here. Needless to say it managed to cause simultaneous fits of laughter and gasps of disbelief.

These two were but part of a phenomenal cast. Mam Alto, Azaria Universe, Holly Durant, Lily Paskas and Clare St Clare’s all bring their unique touches to an ensemble that didn’t disappoint for a second. Glory Box builds beautifully, and keeps rising until the final curtain, pausing briefly to let the audience catch their breath and seek cover from all that rained down from the stage (literally). You can’t help but get wrapped up in the persona’s that overflow the stage or be impressed by Glory Box’s willingness to take risks. It’s high risk, high reward stuff. Does it work? Absolutely.

Glory Box Viva La Revolucion 

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Stars

Melba Spiegeltent
20 August – 13 September
 

Raphael Solarsh
About the Author
Raphael Solarsh is writer from Melbourne whose work has appeared in The Guardian, on Writer’s Bloc and in a collection of short stories titled Outliers: Stories of Searching. When not seeing shows, he writes fiction and tweets at @RS_IndiLit.