TURBULENCE!

What I liked

The live band. The costumes. The concept of Mambo the Robot – particularly how at the beginning he embodied another character ‘phoning in’ – it allowed the actor to show some versatility and was a really fun concept, but then it never happened again. Why establish that awesome groundwork and not see it through? At the end they had a bit where they were receiving a ton of phone calls all at the same time via Mambo – how fun would that have been for Mambo to embody all of those people in what had the potential to be a brilliant show-stopping moment. Despite the missed opportunities, Mambo was the saving grace of the show.

What I didn't like

The writing and performances were weak and lazy. Just because something works as an improv scene doesn’t mean it will translate well into a scripted piece and I felt that was the case here. You’re given the opportunity to pre-plan jokes and story structure and work on character development and I felt there were so many lost opportunities. The song lyrics lacked humor and punchlines and the characters lacked definition and arc. There were so many chances for the “fast and farcical” promised in their tagline, especially with such a ridiculously fun premise, but it felt slow and misguided most of the time.

The choreography was another missed opportunity – it felt like they were doing the movements because they felt there should be some movement because it’s a musical and that’s what you do, and sometimes dance for the sake of dance can work, but in this case it wasn’t at all connected to the characters or situations and felt distracting. There is a song about “spacercising”, how one exercises in space but all of the movements were regular exercise moves – why not create some interesting and ridiculous space dance moves to warrant dedicating a whole scene and song to spacercise?

This is minor but telling – the two martians would make appearances throughout – one time, a plastic spoon fell out of one of their costumes as they were exiting and another time one of the martians brought on a plastic water bottle (from Earth?) and kept squeezing it making noise – but neither time did they address these items or did they have anything to do with the scene, it felt like the performer just forgot, or didn’t care to leave these items backstage before coming on. It felt on point with the night though – why not strive to put more thought and care into your work?

This was crying for an improved script and stronger direction.

My overall impression

I had high expectations based on all of the glowing reviews from the press and audience and based on their prior success at Fringe the past two years. I was extremely disappointed and myself and two other colleagues I sat with were all confused by the hype of this show.