Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
La Clique
Cabaret Festival
Civic Theatre
June 3 – 15
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
Headlining Auckland’s Cabaret Festival starting this week is La Clique featuring a range of performers with some of them presenting at a press preview.
La Clique has been performing for many years with their performers changing over the years. It was here at the Auckland Arts Festival in 2007 and while some of the performers have changed the class, innovation and magic is still there.
Performing in the Civic, the show is particularly magical, not just being in the Civic but being on the Civic’s stage. The lights, curtains and apparatus that we never see takes the audience into a very different space and looming over us are the seats of the stalls and balcony and above them the ceiling of the Civic with its twinkling stars of the solar system.
Tara Boon is a foot juggler which sounds like a pretty easy trick to take to the beach later in the year, that is, until you realise that some people can’t even get their shoes on without becoming a contortionist. Boon is as dexterous with her feet as ordinary people are with their hands. Resting on her reclining chair, she initially upends an umbrella which showers the stage with red petals and with her act she is able to manipulate up to four oriental umbrellas – on the handle or on their edges.
It’s a simple slick stylish act performed to the song “Umbrella” by Mechanical Bride and you keep forgetting how difficult it is to manipulate an umbrella, let alone four of them.
Byron Hutton is a juggler who is as clever with his hands as Boon is with her feet. He manages to juggle with his hands as well as other parts of his body, the clubs dancing and cavorting around him in fluid movements.
He showed his consummate skill a couple of times when he lost a club and instantly caught another from his offsider before moving on to the next routine.
The act which attracted thy most gasps was the fire eating Queen, Heather Holliday. I’ve seen a few fire eaters before but never up close, so close I could feel the heat of the flames. I know they use low combustion fuels which are less dangerous than things like alcohol and petrol but even so it all looks a bit scary, especially when she takes her flaming batons and drags them across her skin
At the end of her performance, her offsider came on with a flute full of what I thought was a celebratory glass of champagne. But no. This was a glass full of her flame throwing fluid. She drank the flute and then spouted out a flaming jet like a flamethrower which had all the audience recoiling .
We saw just three acts but on the night, there will be a dozen. It will be a night full of the sexy, the funny and the dangerous
New Zealand Arts Review 