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‘Aluminum Show’ keeps ideas flowing
It was nice weather for ducts on Tuesday night, March 9, when “The Aluminum Show” opened a two-week stand at the Victoria Theatre.
Make that the Reynolds Wrap Theatre, which is what the foil and tubing-draped place looked like before the start of 75 imaginative, playful, otherworldly, eye-catching and odd minutes without intermission.
The inventive and original touring production from Israel showed its mettle quickly when two adult-sized tubes spawned a baby inchworm that crossed the stage like a Slinky with an attitude before taking a shine to a metallic puppet show with songs including “Staying Alive,” Led Zeppelin”s “Black Dog” and a slightly tweaked “Ghost Dusters,” with props to match.
A young spectator toward the front of the theater could be heard giggling gleefully at the sight of the little worm, which proved contagious.
The cast was made up of six agile and busy dancers — each one a silver metalist with a brassy personality — and a handful of assistant allies in alloy.
They manipulated or wore sections of the segmented flexible piping, sometimes humanizing it, sometimes transforming it into creatures from other worlds. There were dancing beings with wide leggings and a 20-foot-tall puppet that took a stroll up the aisle of the theater thanks to teamwork by several performers.
Members of the audience weren’t permitted to just sit back like lead weights . They were drawn into the act when long sections of ducting or giant inflated metallic pillows were extended or thrown into the crowd, at one point spanning the main floor.
As quickly as you can say Jiffy Pop, pieces of the shiny stuff were also blown into the air overhead, filtering down through the lights that were a key component of the production.
Most of the sights and antics were obvious, but small touches gleamed and glimmered if you looked closely — for example, the way one of the dancers tilted her head gently to the side without missing a stride when the big puppet’s hand touched it.
A couple of the bits began to tarnish with repetition or familiarity. For the most part, new ideas kept flowing down the pipeline.
All in all, “The Aluminum Show” was a lively and quick moving conduit that should leave people of many ages smiling. It will continue through March 21 at the Victoria, First and Main streets. Ticket information is available at (937) 228-3630 or www.ticketcenterstage.com.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Post your comment | Categories: Review, Theater
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By George
March 10, 2010 10:07 PM | Link to this
Terry, did you watch the same show that I did tonight? The best word I can come up with for “The Aluminum Show” is “disappointing”, which it was, in addition to “repetitive”, “uninteresting”, “unpolished”, and “a waste of time and money”. The show dragged on to the point where I was looking at my watch, wondering how slowly, in fact, 80 minutes could pass. The best part of the show may have been the rather clever credits sequence using the photosensitive backdrop. This is easily the worst thing I have seen in a theatre in many years; and I’ve watched a lot of theatre. You’re doing your readers a disservice by downplaying the show’s flaws. They easily outnumber its good qualities. People will come out of it saying “Oh, it was wonderful,” but I think it’s mostly because they’re trained to say it’s wonderful instead of “that made no bloody sense whatsoever”. Victoria Theatre has laid a massive, unpolished, silver egg with this one.
By Margo
March 11, 2010 2:18 PM | Link to this
Loved the show! It was inventive and it seems like there were tons of young people in the audience. That’s great to see. I really liked it when they came out after the show and allowed us to play with their aluminum pieces.
By home2468
March 14, 2010 6:17 PM | Link to this
Sad our local sponsors can’t find dancing, singing, or show talent locally. Dayton’s got more talent than our sponsors credit them with. Sad Dayton Contemporary Dance Company performs at the Centerville High School while foreign writhing aluminum tube-sters get Victoria’s limelight. Wouldn’t have to use subtle lighting trick effects with DCDC dancers!
By Jack
March 16, 2010 9:42 AM | Link to this
I’ve been a subscriber to the Vicrotia theater/ Schuster Center series for more than 5 years, and this was amoung the most dissapointing show we’ve seen. Strange is the best way to describe it.
By Ray
March 16, 2010 9:45 AM | Link to this
Obviously you did not read my email to Ken Neufeld of the victoriatheatre association. I also copied the DDN [rrollins]. I repeat that email here: REPEAT “Aluminum” was an absolutely horrible show!!!!!! It is obvious why there was no intermission - everybody would have left! Six shows for the price of five. I guess this was our free one and and I hope you also got it for free! STOP REPEAT I quess Ken and you proved a couple of points: 1) Ken doesn’t know a bad show when he picks one and 2) You don’t recognize a bad play either and are not honest enough to stand up and say so!
By Joe
March 16, 2010 10:58 AM | Link to this
I was very disappointed in this show. It lacked creativity and was boring and repetitive. There were several equipment breakdowns during the Sunday matinee as well as cast members out of synch. A waste of time and money.
By Patt
March 21, 2010 5:05 PM | Link to this
This is theater??? I feel like a hoax was played on me!! After 35 minutes, I couldn’t take any more and left. Someone dropped the ball on this one!!!
By Gtown
March 22, 2010 1:09 PM | Link to this
We left looking at each other saying “what a waste of time and money” and we upgraded our seats for that? Yes, the dancers were very talented, but after about 15 minutes we were ready to leave.
By Mike
March 22, 2010 2:35 PM | Link to this
To compare this show to Blue Man Group or Stomp is simply criminal (I have seen both). The acts were long, boring, and childish. Wish I had read some reviews first. Will be cautious before booking another show at the Victoria.
By Lisa
June 2, 2010 9:24 AM | Link to this
I saw the evening show on March 21st. It was AMAZING! The energy, the creativity and the non-stop surprises during the show, were like something I’ve never seen before! The audience of this evening will surely agree with me as they all stood up at the end of the show and applauded loudly!
By George
July 7, 2010 8:27 AM | Link to this
“Lisa”, I’m calling you out. You’re a bogus positive comment. I’ve seen three comments so far on various blogs, all posted on June 2nd, that purport to have loved this show. No way that a bunch of “people” with different names all decided 2 1/2 months after Aluminum Show ended in Dayton to post about their experience on the same day… This is inane, awful, terrible, brutalizing “theatre”. I hope no one else wastes their money on it.
By null
February 28, 2011 12:29 PM | Link to this
“This is inane, awful, terrible, brutalizing “theatre.” This comment from above states it perfectly! We actually did waste money on it. At one point I visualized the producers laughing at the people in the audience.
By Spoon OK
April 7, 2011 4:23 PM | Link to this
I saw this two nights ago with my wife and my parents. We are all huge fans of theater, including Stomp and Blue Man Group. We went out on a limb and got tickets to Aluminum simply because it looked interesting. It was NOT. About 15 minutes into it, my wife (who hasnt disliked any piece of theater she’s seen yet, including a couple of high school performances) turned to me and said “Now I know why they don’t have a intermission, no one would come back!” As a matter of fact, i would say about 1/3 of the audience left throughout the show, as it was about the least interesting thing ever. It basically looks like a bunch of children found a bunch of old junk in a warehouse and said to each other “lets see what all we can do with this stuff!” Well not much thats very entertaining! The couple of parts where they are dancing in the tubes as suits is fun…but after that it’s just asinine. Aboriginal dancing aroung blowing aluminum sheets, making a goofy “robot” from silver pillows, and the part that actually resembled stomp was simply “shooshing” the aluminum tubes to make a little bit of noise in an incredibly simple rhythm, all the while hooting and hollaring as though the “music” (noise) they are making required some kind of skill. All four of us are die hard theatre fans, and this is the first time we thought we should get our money back. We decided against it because we spent so much time laughing about how rediculous Aluminum was, that it was worth the laughs we got. The most rediculous, boring, annoying, and almost offensively unusual things i have ever seen in my life. F+ (the + is because we laughed for hours afterwards because we couldn’t believe how stupid it was)