Review - Humans: display of sheer brilliance
Humans
Presented by Circa and QPAC
Created by Yaron Lifschits and the Circa Ensemble
Directed by Yaron Lifschits
Playhouse Theatre
Queensland Performing Arts Centre
South Bank
Brisbane
Season: December 6-9. Duration: 70 minutes. Bookings: qpac.com.au or phone 136 246
Humans is a 70 minute display of sheer brilliance, resilience, stamina and style and on opening night the ten supremely fit performers were given a fitting standing ovation from the packed Playhouse audience. There were six men, Marty Evans, Scott Grove, Keaton Hentoff-Killian, Nathan Knowles, Todd Kilby and Daniel O’Brien, and four women, Bridie Hooper, Cecilia Martin, Caroline Baillon and Kimberley O’Brien.
And what a team they proved to be with total trust in each other at times with routines that you definitely should not try at home! Human skipping ropes was one and tossing a girl round the stage from man to man as she twisted and turned in mid-air was another.
They climbed, formed human pyramids, bounced over each other with death defying precision in moves that I’m sure one slip would mean permanent injury. They tumbled, somersaulted, did more back flips than a politician and the girls were thrown around like basketballs and not once was there a slip or error of judgement. The whole show was just brilliant.
The audience sat with jaws dropping in disbelief and uttered gasps of awe at what they were seeing.
This Brisbane based outfit is back from a five country tour, which included a rave reviewed performance at the Edinburgh Festival.
This new work told the story of the human condition as conceived by the troupe and the story was told in mind-boggling performances that portrayed many facets of human life through emotions, trendsetting, love and sex, hate, people as puppets, gentleness, and violence. They were portrayed with physical force, drama and often humour, and with all the talents of the Circa performers shining through.
One of my favourite moments was elbow licking! Have you ever tried to lick your own elbow? Try, it’s impossible and it’s funny to watch. When the entire company goes into contortions in valiant but useless effort it is hilarious.
The hanging ropes were used to vividly and skilfully portray how people are controlled like puppets. There were some scary moments when nine of the performers built three human pillars and the final girl climbed to the top and did the splits across the towers.
The gasps came when the centre tower walked away!
The choreography was excellent too and the dance rhythms emphasised the more dramatic pieces with some beautiful duets and quartets
Those Humans performers were more super human than human and I must admit that the time just flew by and I joined in the ovation as the grinning performers took curtain call after curtain call.