Auckland Arts Festival review: BLAM!, The Civic

Office guys go wild in BLAM! Photo / Soren Meisner

Act’s world premiere features acrobats and fireworks at Domain

If you know anyone who thinks the arts festival isn't for blokes take them to see BLAM! - a 75-minute blast of testosterone-driven mayhem with amped-up, gaming style SFX and a heavy-metal soundtrack. What's not to like about that.

The title really does tell you all you need to know about the show.

(If you don't get it just think of the sound kids make when they aim two fingers in your direction and convince themselves they are holding a lethal weapon.)

A bunch of guys goofing around at the office and losing themselves in action movie fantasies doesn't seem like much of a premise but when you throw in superb physical theatre performances, an awesome soundtrack, ingenious set design and the creative genius of Icelandic writer/director Kristjan Ingimarsson - you've got one hell of a show.

While there is plenty of gratuitous violence the show doesn't neglect the sensitive side of the male psyche.

There is a wildly ecstatic, impossibly romantic waltz with the water-cooler, and the heroic efforts of a triage team struggling to revive the same horribly mutilated water-cooler had the audience on the edge of their seats.

Image 1 of 21: Group F perform Skin of Fire as part of the Auckland Arts Festival. Photo / Michael Craig

A show that is so much fun shouldn't be subject to intellectual scrutiny but it does offer a timely reminder of the way kids' play used to spiral into uninhibited flights of make-believe in the era before gaming consoles did the imagining for them.

And beneath the adolescent exuberance there is a very smart commentary on the timidity and pervasive anxiety of a world that has suppressed and sublimatedman's natural inclination to smash stuff up.

BLAM!
Where: The Civic
When: Until tomorrow.

For more information, visit aucklandfestival.co.nz