Society

Society is more circus than cabaret, but it’s great fun and an hour of amazement and gasp-inducing feats of skill.  A spiegeltent is the perfect setting, with its big top roof and the audience arrayed on three sides of the thrust stage.  Ebullient MC Francesco Minniti (who also directs the show and later does some magic tricks) has some patter about New Orleans and the dark arts, but this gloss on proceedings turns out to be really neither here nor there – except maybe as a justification for the show’s great, funky music, chosen by Music Director Kara Ciezki. 

Here’s a troupe of sexy and very attractive performers who march out together from behind the red curtain and into the continually dazzling lighting effects designed by Harrison Cope.  The costumes, designed by Nancy Cananzi, are varied and reference everything from a toy ‘marching band leader’ (Jacinta Rohan) through to an echo of Montmartre in torch singer Kara Ciezki.

For a kickoff there’s the aerial hoop performer and adagio dancer Mimi LeNoire [sic] and the acrobat and aerialist couple Alyssa Moore and Mathew Brown.  He maintains a very engaging ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this’ smile, while Ms Moore remains pert but cool through all their astonishing routines.  There’s Silver Fox Simon Storey, who looks like a strongman, but does some adagio dancing, and marching band girl Ms Rohan returns for a number with multiple ‘hula hoops’ and turns as a contortionist. The contortionist thing, I must say, is astonishing, but judging from the queasy sounds around me, just possibly goes a little too far into the grotesque.  Meanwhile, Ms Ciezki belts out some numbers in a big, big voice, but it is, unfortunately, hard to understand the lyrics…

Juggler Tully Fedorowjtsch is for me the star of the show.  A pocket rocket figure, he unmistakeably invites the audience to marvel at how marvellous he is and he does some things I’ve certainly not seen before, including balancing and spinning a metal cube on his hands and then on his head.  Mr Minniti provides the comedy elements, specifically with a sequence of ‘magic’ costume changes inside a fabric tube; it all ends in an inevitable but very funny climax reveal. 

If I’ve a criticism of this show it’s that, despite the engaging personalities and undoubted skills on display, it needs a little more variation and changes of pace.  The acts are classy but one after another become somewhat relentless.  Perhaps, judging from comparable shows seen recently (such as the glitzy Club Swizzle), After Dark Theatre could expand their personnel to a comedian or comedienne per se, or even a touch of burlesque.  After all, Society is advertised as ‘Adults Only’.  That said, if this is the sort of thing you like, you’ll like this.  Our audience certainly did and we piled out into the night satisfied – and in awe that the performers were going to do it all again in about forty-five minutes.

Michael Brindley