‘The Wild Party’

The Place: 5 April 2008

Rosie Kay’s ‘The Wild Party’ is not all that it says on the tin. I went along, anticipating a show about a wild party – perhaps a raucous, danced update of the one once thrown by Mike Leigh for Abigail. Instead, I experienced a fascinating journey that succinctly merged several genres into one gigantic explosion of complex and well-crafted physical theatre. The fast and intricate choreography is a crucial supporting player to the text, brilliantly constructed around the foundation of rhyming meter in Joseph Mancure March’s eponymous jazz age poem; and all performed to a backdrop of original jazz music, played live on stage by Percy Purseglove, Doug Hough and Alcyona Mick.

The work succeeds by cleverly blurring all the boundaries; musicians sit apart from the action but suddenly become crucial actors in the narrative; the players often step over the thin line that separates art from life - in one powerful sequence, Nick Carter (playing the unhappy husband of the couple throwing the party) loses it and forcibly rearranges the jazz drums around the stage with a venom that seems shockingly real, reinforced by other performers using his actual name while calming him down. The main ambiguity is in a setting that floats seamlessly from modern day to 30’s America – think ‘Abigail’s Party’ meets ‘Chicago’ - while building to its fast-paced climax of infidelity and murder. The dark side is expertly punctuated with light interludes, including a couple of brilliantly-timed to be apparently ad-libbed, comic one-liners, most effectively delivered by Percy, the musician.

The performers are on stage before the audience arrives (and the party continues throughout the interval); but the action really starts with the explosive arrival of Rosie Kay from behind the audience, making her way downstairs with expletives flying faster than Gordon Ramsay on a bad day. A little later, the narrative is interrupted as Kay takes a microphone to introduce each of her fellow performers - like rock musicians at a gig - which sets the scene for the ongoing blurring of roles. A work as potentially confusing as this requires a defining backbone of control and the imposing Kay delivers this in spades, with a strong, sexy and charismatic central performance that makes the show. She has two narrative-defining dance duets; a twisting, violent quarrel with her husband (Carter) and an erotic, sensitively simulated intercourse with her handsome party guest (Morgan Cloud) that leads to the final violent dénouement.

Kay is well-supported by Nick Carter, who captures the seedy, seething resentment of a no-hoper husband struggling to control his wild and beautiful wife, and Cloud, effectively underplaying the rather one-dimensional “matinee idol”-type. The cast is ably completed by Sung-Im Her as Cloud’s “plus one” for the party, a key role in terms of taking the early text forward.

I admire Kay’s artistic integrity for not miking-up her performers although some of the text was indistinct as a consequence, but overall it made little difference to my thorough enjoyment of this dynamic show. We were certainly voyeurs to a truly wild party, witnessing its drunken, sleazy energy delivered with a powerful realism, but it’s so cleverly interlaced with story-telling dance and a compelling, rhythmic text - closely synergised with an evocatively authentic jazz overlay - that this is one party you won’t live to regret in the morning.

Graham Watts

Dancers featured:

Kay, Carter, Cloud, Sung-Im Her, Purseglove, Hough, Mick