Tokyo Shock Boys @ Thebarton Theatre
5:00pm, Sun 14 Mar 2004
Score: 7
Short Review: Underwhelming… except for the CO2
Apparently, it’s been 10 years since the Tokyo Shock Boys first came to the Fringe. I’ve never seen them before, so I took advantage of a nice matinee to check them out.
First off – I get pissed off with shows where the performers repeatedly run around greeting the audience. That screams “lack of material” to me. However, once the Boys actually kicked into stunt mode, the laughs came pretty thick and fast. Clips being yanked off, hands being superglued, milk being sucked through the nose and squirted out through the eyes, scrotal weight-lifting, freezing hands and faces with dry ice, and more carbon dioxide stunts than you could poke a stick at – it was all good, but not what I would consider shocking – or maybe I’m just getting a little blasé about all these freakshow acts. The lack of shock-factor made the show a little underwhelming to me :}
But, to be honest, I’m a bit disturbed by the number of parents who thought it’d be a good idea to take their kids along to a show like this… I mean, does a child under 10 years of age need to see a man’s scrotum in a tug-of-war with a motorbike? Still, as a self-contained show, it offers some nice thrills – but given that you could see two Umbrella Revolution shows for less than the cost of this, you’d have to weigh up your options carefully.