Robert Tanitch reviews Attraction at London Palladium, W1
Hungarian artist and choreographer Zoltan Szucs founded Attraction in 2004.
In 2013 Attraction won Britain’s Got Talent, the first foreign act to do so.
The Box is their first show to include all three of their visual techniques and skills: shadow performance, black light theatre and video mapping.
It was given a one-night stand to find out what worked and what didn’t.
The Box definitely has potential but it is not yet ready for public consumption.
Two things are immediately obvious. Firstly, there is not enough material for a full length stage show with interval and secondly, nobody is interested in the extended story-line. It is difficult to get emotionally involved with silhouettes when there is no characterisation.
The sketches need more variety. There are too many involving gangsters and child abduction. In the second half the production was repeating itself. Some comedy would be welcome.
The high spots of the shadow performance are watching the cast doing what they do best: reproducing inanimate objects, animals and letters of the alphabet with their bodies.
The high spot of the black light theatre are three flowers blossoming and the female gymnasts skin-tight in silver, seemingly aerial, and doing lyrical things with their bodies.
There is a tribute to American dancer Loie Fuller who was famed for twirling silk in the 1890s. There is also some clever juggling of hands, feet and hats and at the very end we are shown just how many dancers had been involved to achieve the visual effect.
The video mapping includes a couple being chased though the streets and there is some amazing photography of a twister in destructive action.
The ideal venue for Attraction would be Las Vegas; and they obviously think so, too. Why else would they include a patriotic sketch celebrating America?
One final point: it is absurd for an ensemble of 14 to take individual curtain calls and even more so when only two members of the ensemble are identifiable.
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