STOMP brings down the house and on Tuesday, this dance/percussion/comedy troupe definitely did something to Popejoy's foundations.
Hurling themselves mind and body through an almost two-hour non-stop set, the eight visiting STOMP practitioners rang this sleepy town awake.
Founders Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas are still hard at work reinventing household items into percussive and melodic instruments. Albuquerque is one stop on "The Steve Tour" this year.
This show is one of a kind in its imagination and its apparent ideology - anything is an instrument, everyone is a musician and everyone can participate.
The cast members of STOMP began this performance like all the shows since 1991 have begun with one man, this year Carlos Thomas, coming out with a broom and sweeping the stage. Each sound is audible and marked in what was previously a heavy silence - rhythms begin to creep in.
He coughs, he snorts, he slaps the broom on its side, sounding a pleasant thunk. All the sounds he can possibly make with a broom get incorporated and gradually an intricate rhythm of swooshes and footsteps emerge in a thick cloud of dust rising from the stage floor.
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Cast members join him in the rhythm, dressed in a variety of altered worker uniforms, covered in paint and wearing steel-toed boots. No spangles, no spandex, no comfortable appropriate footwear for this crew which follows the STOMP premise - anyone can be a member.
Another ingenious sketch really brought this point home. The tall and impressively dexterous Elizabeth Vidos sits on a step mid-set with regal percussionist Sophia Sharp and the almost-too-cute Tonya Kay. The women of this year's cast are bored.
They grab a bag of garbage and begin to turn its contents into instruments. Sharp takes on an empty fast-food cup and plays it by pulling the straw in and out. Vidos winds up with two paper bags and pulls her goggles down for effect. Kay plays a plastic shopping bag by blowing it up and pounding on it.
Watching these professionals tinker with garbage, trying to make it sound rhythmical in this five-minute sketch condenses what it really means to be ingenious - staying childlike. One can image McNicholas and Cresswell snagging the plungers from their bathrooms and getting together to "jam" on them, as happens later in the show.
STOMP was first previewed at London's Bloomsbury Theatre and premiered at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh, Scotland. McNicholas and Cresswell funded the original production themselves, in addition to directing it.
After winning awards, STOMP went on a worldwide tour, hitting stages and sold-out auditoriums in Hong Kong, Barcelona, Dublin, Galway and Sydney. In New York, STOMP won an Obie Award and a Drama Desk Award for Most Unique Theatre Experience.
That award seems most appropriate as this performance leaves its audience a changed beast. Spoons look different. Streetlights look different. Tin ware and plastic bins of every kind look different. They all look like possibilities for pulsing clamor.
STOMP will be at Popejoy Hall through Sunday July 27. For tickets go to www.tickets.com.
