Time Machine @ Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide 15/3/2024
STREB’s highly skilled EXTREME ACTION HEROES pushed the limits of common sense and safety as they explored just how much gravity the body can defy and just how much pounding punishment the body can take as the ballet and gymnastics trained athletes threw themselves full force into gym mats from ridiculous heights.
Elizabeth Streb loves to explore the human body’s interaction with large scale action machines and in the opening set used what looked like a half German Wheel. German Wheels have become standard fare in companies like Cirque du Soleil and in the International Gymnaestrada. The half wheel with a flat surface covering the circumference creates possibilities for some absolutely crazy stunt work. Great fun. Great way to open the show; and the mainly school aged audience was hooked.
Time Machine is a retrospective work that covers Elizabeth Streb’s career that started in 1985 and has seen her dancers perform extreme action in theatres, outdoor festivals like WOMADelaide, art museums and in iconic landmarks like the London Eye. To emphasise the fact that this is a retrospective work, the soundscape has a running commentary of interviews and reviews of previous STREB shows. But Time Machine is much more than an homage to previous performers in the company and performances, there is also a very obvious acknowledgement of the extraordinary physical performers and comedians that have shaped the genres we now call Physical Comedy and Physical Theatre. Routines from The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, Mack Sennett and the Keystone Cops are reworked with a clever take on the iconic plank routine, and Keaton’s falling wall with an open window routine. Chase routines are a chaotic frenzy timed to minute perfection.
The trampoline work that is the finale is crazy to watch. There is the grace of human flight intertwined with manic urgency. As Elizabeth Streb said in an interview, “What makes the work both witty and cruel, is not just the oddity and difficulty of the continuous stunts, it’s the timing and spatial constraints. Straddling a line between playfulness and self-destruction.”
The matinee audience was treated to a special Q & A after the show when the Adelaide Festival’s Education Officer, Julie Orchard introduced Elizabeth Streb and the company to the audience. The first and most obvious question was – “Do the stunts hurt?” It was nice to hear the cast resist the urge to adopt a bravado stance, and admit that their bodies do ache and that they do end up with bruises after some shows. But as Elizabeth Streb explained, her dancers are highly trained and, “train within an inch of their lives in rehearsals to avoid accidents or injuries.”
The overriding impression that came through was the mutual respect that exists between Streb and her dancers, and that together they are passionate about exploring the extremes that the human body can be pushed to in the pursuit of a theatrical aesthetic that places human movement at its core.
What was most endearing, was the mutually respectful manner in which the questions were asked and answered. STREB’s EXTREME ACTION HEROES are passionate about their work and deliver it with so much joy. Time Machine was a pleasure to watch, and the Q&A gave the audience an insight into the workings of New York’s iconic performing arts troupe.
Adelaide Festival Review By Bob Becker