Fruit Flies Like a Banana
FIVE STARS | Remarkably inventive blend of music, dance acrobatics makes for great Fringe fun
Rating: ★★★★★
Company: The Fourth Wall, Boston
Genre: Unclassifiable
Venue: 10 - School of Contemporary Dancers
You haven't really heard Mussorgsky until you've heard him accompanied by a skipping rope — or Billy Joel until you've heard him performed on a toy piano.
Okay, maybe that's not quite true. But the remarkably inventive blend of music, dance and acrobatics delivered here by Boston's the Fourth Wall Ensemble is quite unlike anything else you'll find at the Fringe, and it's completely delightful.
The three professionally-trained musicians present familiar tunes like Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and Dave Brubeck's Take Five, but with twists — playing while riding on each other's backs, for example, or performing Vince Guaraldi's Skating while sliding across the stage on rolling chairs.
They race (literally dashing across the stage and around the theatre) through 22 pieces of music over an hour, played in a random order determined by audience-selected cards. Some bits work better than others, but no matter — there's always something new and surprising just around the corner.
Whether you're a music aficionado or not, it's a fun, frenetic, family-friendly delight.
