The stage is alive, with the sound of thumping. And clicking. And banging. And tapping.
And, yes, stomping.
The little percussion production that refuses to die, "Stomp" has returned to the Civic Center for a short weekend run, and Friday’s opening found the audience responding as enthusiastically as ever. If you don’t feel like clapping your hands, tapping your toes and snapping your figures upon entering the theater, you will before you leave. Stage commands (nonverbal) and peer pressure demand it.
Resistance is futile. As "Stomp" so relentlessly demonstrates, rhythm is the primal pulse of existence, beginning with the heartbeat. Children generally discover the joy of banging before they feel the need to talk. And for all the sophistication and complexity of the polyrhythmic dynamic generated by these eight performers in this touring production, there is something childlike in the joy they convey while banging on things. And occasionally each other.
The result is a fairly radical exercise in theater, for all the longevity of its mainstream appeal. Created in the early 1990s by British collaborators Luke Cresswell (a percussionist) and Steve McNicholas (who had more of a theater background), there would seem to be no script, no dialogue, no words (until the very end).
No acts, no characters (by name, at least), no way of identifying which performer is which (the playbill has no photos, and lists an even a dozen participants, though only eight are onstage), no costume changes (though the performers are all in variations of street-rag costuming).
Musically, this production is something like the longest drum solo you’ve ever imagined, performed by a drum-less octet. If you closed your eyes and responded to sound alone, you might find this less satisfying than a Caribbean steel drum band or an African percussion troupe, where the approach is more purely musical and a little less gimmicky.
The trick, then, is to not close your eyes, for so much of what makes "Stomp" work so well (and makes even drum-solo-resistant theatergoers respond so enthusiastically) is the visual dynamic. The lighting and stage design are both brilliant, with the former occasionally creating percussive mystery under darkness, allowing for spotlight turns by the performers or using miner-style headlights for laser precision.
The latter renders the stage setting as an urban oasis for society’s throwaways — an alley, perhaps — with a collection of discarded artifacts — highway signs and such. Corrugated steel, which made for quite a racket. And two stories, which could find performers climbing to the upper level or swinging from the scaffolding. Kind of "West Side Story" meets "Clockwork Orange."
And before the evening is over, pretty much everything on that stage will be beaten, banged or brushed, as the troupe demonstrates that whoever you are, wherever you are, the whole world is your percussion playground. Broom handles are easy, as are pails and pots. They even throw in the kitchen sink (a verbal pun as well as a performance highlight, with sinks suspended by chains around the percussionists’ necks).
But who would have imagined the percussion possibilities of newspapers, not only rolled but torn? Or a tightly choreographed symphony of shopping carts?
Though the characters never introduce or identify themselves, we know them as characters by the end. There’s the nerdy guy with the glasses who seems out of step, or marches to the beat of a different drum, and is frequently the butt of visual jokes by the others. There’s a guy who is hyperkinetic — who just can’t restrain himself. And there are the two women who do as much of the heavy lifting, rhythmically, as any of the men.
And there’s the stocky guy who leads the audience in the handclap version of call-and-response and seems to lead the rest of the troupe as well. We don’t know them, but we get to know them, at least as their characters.
More: 'Stomp' to play at Des Moines Civic Center on Jan. 26-28
This really isn’t a conventional musical, because there are no songs and there's little melody. It’s more of a “beatsical,” mixing tap dance and hand jive with found objects and custodial tools, infusing streetwise choreography with the joy of beating out rhythms for a living.
As Todd Rundgren once sang in a minor hit, “I don’t want to work // I want to bang on the drum all day.” This is that. Without the drums.
‘Stomp’
When: Through Sunday
Where: Des Moines Civic Center
Ticket prices: $30-$70
For more online: DesMoinesPerformingArts.org