[2012048] The Brothers Pitt
The Pitts Family Circus @ The Deluxe
1:30pm, Sun 26 Feb 2012
There’s a long queue running alongside the fence bordering the ‘Garden when I arrive for The Brothers Pitt; I take my place at the end of the line and, head down, start making some notes on my phone. It’s not long before clumps of people join me and, as I glanced around, I noticed that over half of the Gravity & Other Myths crew were standing behind me. Now, I’m an unashamed gibbering fan of these guys (and girls), so I leapt into conversation, showering them with quite possibly uncomfortable plaudits before we filed into The Deluxe.
Once inside, I find a seat – sometimes it’s incredibly handy to be traveling solo – and see Johnny Nasser (from Monkeyshines) sitting nearby. So he cops an earful of enthusiasm too, accepting it with a broad, friendly grin… and then the Pitts take to the stage in front of a nearly full room on a sunny Sunday.
The Brothers Pitt – Cessil (Gareth Baajland) and Stuart (Tom Flanagan, also seen in Kaput) – really know how to work a crowd, even within the confines of The Deluxe; there’s tons of tumbling and balancing tricks threaded together with familial overtones. Stu Pitt (geddit?) is played to clumsy perfection by Flanagan, with the early broken iPod incident evoking a lot of laughs (along with references to their “brother” Brad, and sister Sandy – Baajland’s real-life partner, Bronte Webster).
The pole balancing (complete with Cessil playing banjo) and a fantastic brick balance routine are genuinely spectacular, and Cessil hams it up with vaudevillian ease – a great contrast to Stu’s buffoonery. But it’s the arrival of Wee Pitt (Baajland and Webster’s son, Gwyn) that is absolutely, heart-meltingly scene-stealing: the youngster (who couldn’t be more than three or four years old) balances atop a precarious human structure with smug confidence, whips out a slapstick gag, and then trots back to his Mum in the audience.
Look – I’m not really one who gets emotionally sucked in by young ‘uns… there’s definitely no cooing over children from me. But Wee Pitt was so adorable, and so enviably comfortable onstage, that I couldn’t help but melt a little. And that, combined with some great acrobatics and stunts and vaudevillian fun and laughs, made for a fabulous show.