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![]() June 2003 London, The Place © Jeffery Taylor Former dancer, Critic and an Arts feature writer for the |
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"Richard Strange, adventurer", says the cast list for Protein's The Banquet last week at The Place. He is tall, bald and rangy and dressed in Graham Greene tropical whites conjures up wild imaginings of King Solomon's Mines and the Lost City of Atlantis. Hook nosed and morose, Strange plays deus ex machina to Protein's lunatic cast as they gallop through a highly selective, subjective and refreshingly comic, dance drama about the feast of life. Strange, aged anything between 15 to 100, dominates the action with revolver, riding crop, dinner gong and a powerful baritone as two couples go "Out of the soup, Into the loop and From goo to zoo, From zoo to you", (lyrics by Richard Strange). Designer Dick Bird's Trompe l'oeil cabin, which induces alarming Alice in Wonderland changes in size and perspective, hosts a predictable progression as the dancers go from amoeba to a brief sighting of Adam and Eve driven from Eden by a barrage of apples. Then the fun begins. Food and its propensity to induce gluttony features heavily and provides Strange with a hilarious take on the hopelessness of teaching table manners. He follows with a David Attenborough breathlessly monitoring the mating habits of the human female (Esther Weisskopf); he rips apart a wedding photograph and the bride and groom, while an up to date Adam and Eve return to watch the drudgery of their progeny.
But it is a mixed message on stage. Strange's words extol the survival of the fittest, but the action describes a sub species so vile it ultimately destroys itself. But, hey so what? Dancers Jean Abreu, Tasha Gilmore, Luca Silvestrini and Weisskopf are refreshingly free of the po faced self importance of most of today's modern dancers and Strange is a welcome addition to the British dance scene. Who cares about the message, two out of three is good enough for me.
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