Smashed

Usually first off the block to complain about jugglers at festivals I am now forced to eat my words. Smashed is an indisputable smash! In only an hour the cast managed to change my mind and turn me into a juggling-lover. That said, Smashed is as much contemporary dance, physical theatre and comedy as it is ball skills. There is a relaxed approach to the performance that belies the exquisite precision of the piece. A nonchalance that makes the whole look rather easy, which it clearly is not, especially when they engage in intricate knots, a juggling gavotte that turns the cast into a human cat’s cradle – with added juggled apples.

If it sounds mad then believe me, it is, utterly bonkers which is why I giggled and laughed almost from start to finish. I was also surprised by how erotic juggling can be. Really, there is a level of intimacy to this piece that, whilst happily sailing over the heads of the younger members of the audience, had some of us sniggering. There was even a moment which seemed slightly misogynistic as the male members of the cast juggled their apples across the backs of the two females as they crawled, on hands and knees, with apples stuffed into their gaping mouths – totally intended to be provocative I am sure.

All this is done with precision timing to a soundtrack of quirky songs and all without dropping one apple… that is until the finale where they goad each other into getting higher and more complex in their tricks, not by cheering but by jeering and shouting “drop it drop it!”. It ends in choreographed carnage, apples and broken china everywhere. They finish by returning to the start but this time they eat the apples as they go. A pure, with some impure moments, work of delight.

Theatre Royal Brighton, 22 May 2012

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