The BUZZ – Reviews – 2014
The ropes and bondage purport to emphasize love and trust. The opening enactment sees the (what’s the right word here? Not victim, or target. Let’s call her…) submissive party, trusting the dominant party implicitly.
It starts off benign enough but after a while, I couldn’t help but feel claustrophobic for the submissive person. Although she looked relaxed and at ease, I felt squirmy.
The second segment downright disturbed me, since it depicted an abduction/kidnapping. The narrator explained that ancient law enforcement used shibari to detain criminals and suspects, but the abduction was nothing of the sort.
The third installment, featuring a person in a gold body suit, showed more of the elegance and the beauty of a willing and athletic participant. This is more like what I expected.
At times, I felt like a voyeur and, at times, I felt like pulling out a knife and cutting the bound person free. The show had some beautiful moments to go with its beautiful music, but there were also some icky moments. Maybe it’s just me—and as a feminist, perhaps it tweaked me somewhat that this is a return to a time when men were always dominant and women were always objectified. You’ll have to make your own judgment.
Astrid: “They were killed by a train”.
Otto: “A lion.”
Astrid: “Train!”
Now there’s your problem, folks, right there in a nuthouse shell. If you can’t agree on how your parents died, where does that leave you?
Apparently, it leaves you playing to a packed and cheering crowd of fans at The Pyramid Wednesday night, delighting in the rawk power, the humour, the pathos, and the musical chops and tight vocals of Die Roten Punkte, Berlin’s Prince and Princess of Rock and Roll.
The one part of their story they seemed to agree on was how horrible it was being raised by their relatives after their parents died (somehow). But then, as their story goes, so did they. Astrid took Otto in the middle of the night and they ran away to Berlin, home-schooling, and ultimate fame, loved by their devoted fans as Die Roten Punkte, German for The Red Dots, although to our English-speaking ears it carries a hint of something more, something about rotten punks, perhaps?
The intimate sidetrips into their personal life helped us come to accept Astrid’s reliance on sausages, and Otto’s idealistic dreams of a world dancing and singing together, But their appeal (like a banana) also relies on the sweet taste of rock and roll inside the Fringe Festival skin.
Astrid makes her miniature drum kit sound huge, especially in her big and I do mean BIG showpiece BODY SLAM)
And Otto plays a rare instrument, a ruby red Flying V, but not just any Flying V, this is a half-sized version made by Epiphone called the Epiphone Flying Vee Wee. And yet Otto turns it into a monster power pop axe with his impeccable playing.
Die Roten Punkte play and sing hard and fast and brilliantly and manage to riff their way through a mountain of rock history tropes, all while bubbling over with bawdy humour and entendres single, double, and more.
At one point Astrid picked an unsuspecting guy out of the audience to help her remove her new costume top designed for the show’s opening blast-off. The undressing process practically screamed wardrobe malfunction; and there was a moment when there was a noticeable holding of breath by everyone, particularly by the guy who found himself holding one end of twenty feet of sash fastened to Astrid’s d⁄ecolletage.
Rock musicians are known for being loud and, dare I say it, a little arrogant—volume to eleven and all that. In that respect the Die Roten Punkte show, EUROSMASH! deviated significantly from the usual rock concert. In addition to obviously being extremely comfortable communicating directly with their audience. Die Roten Punkte displayed an impressive amount of empathy.
It worried both Astrid and Otto that, as the show got underway, one woman near the front might be seated too close to the speaker, as Astrid thought she had seen the woman put her hands near her ears. The band immediately stopped the show completely and made sure that the woman was feeling no pain before continuing. As Otto said apologetically, “We are having a lot of fun, but it could be a long show for you.”
Lots of fun indeed. Buy a banana machine. Rock Bang!
This 45-minute story needs more time to develop the characters. The protagonists jump from setting to setting quickly and not enough happens at each stop. It feels like watching the climax without seeing the plot develop, so you never really dig your heels into the characters.
There were some laughs as well as some catchy gags (the facial expressions made the show) but the plot was too fractured to mould any continuity. While the main characters put on a great show, some of the supporting cast struggled somewhat.
Overall, it’s an enjoyable romp, but there’s potential for so much more.
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