The Town Bikes present – THE MEAT SHOW (FringeTIX)
The Town Bikes @ The Bosco
11:00pm, Wed 20 Feb 2008
I don’t mind being honest here – I was contemplating writing some of this before the show. Y’see, I’d seen The Town Bikes do their segments in The Burlesque Hour and open for Bob Log, and I suspected that a show of their own would be more of the same. Quirky, stilted, plastic, semi-erotic dance. So, I surmised, I’d be closing this entry with a line something like “…but it’s not enough to sustain a whole show.”
Good thing I’m a lazy bugger, because this turned out to be brilliant entertainment.
The ‘Bikes arrive onstage (to rapturous applause from the mostly inebriated crowd) doing the jaunty little dance that I knew and loved-for-short-periods. They’re made out to be meat trays – costumes highlight our meaty (and offalicious) bits, and they’ve got the green faux-grass meat-tray base on their backs (with the familiar butcher price splashes on the other side). They soon leap into the action of The Meat Show – a chocolate wheel spins, highlighting a “game” for the two ‘Bikes to play, and they engage in witty, angled, and perfectly choreographed routines to act the game out.
And that’s pretty much it. Simple, eh?
But it’s wonderful to watch. The Cattle Prod game was a cute opener, Offal Race had the audience wrapped up in offal, and Pass-The-Parcel again had everyone involved. Occasionally, there’d be a break between games, and we’d see the ‘Bikes at home after a hard day at The Meat Show – either basting or milking themselves. There’s an odd moment where the usual cheeky playfulness is tossed aside for a sombre knife-wielding butcher dance (a serious aside) before they become the ultimate winners of The Meat Show – they get to go to Paradise, served up on a platter.
Throughout, audio is superb – thumping quirky electro scores, industrial noisescapes, all accenting the stilted and exaggerated actions of the girls. Costumes, as mentioned above, are glorious; the props are clever throughout. In all, this was a genuine surprise; a fantastically entertaining hour-or-so that had me grinning from ear to ear and thanking the powers-that-be for the Fringe.