On Tuesday, Le Diamant invited the Quebec public to the world premiere of the marriage between wrestling, circus and theater imagined by Ex Machina and its accomplices from Flip Fabrique. For an hour and thirty minutes, SLAM! deploys the three disciplines without succeeding in knocking out his audience.
In the right corner: the great finds from the show. First, Robert Lepage’s direction effectively reproduces the cartoonish world of wrestling, with its villains and heroes who are both larger than life and histrionic. The clowning shares the ring with the acrobatics: between two elbow drops from the third rope, there is nothing like an antics to remind us that wrestling remains a game that only pretends to take itself seriously.
Once the comical atmosphere is set by a venerable announcer who needs his notes to speak the hackneyed pre-match formulas into the microphone, the pugilists enter the stage in an effectively reproduced gala atmosphere. The lighting, the costumes, the arrivals in the ring projected on a giant screen recall this spectacular excess which is the trademark of professional combat sports.
The eight performers fare more than honorably in their triple employment as wrestlers, actors and circus performers. These Flip Fabrique artists had to learn to fight for the show and the result turned out to be successful: their fights have no reason to envy the “credibility” of the originals. On the contrary: the feats of the circus make it possible to magnify the bear’s holds and other clothesline shots, to the great pleasure of the crowd.
The contortionist who is manhandled by the amazon, with her legs which bend in three and her back which rears in two, offers a very successful combination between wrestling and the circus. These moments, however, seem rather rare from one fight to another and the marriage between the two disciplines, sometimes, seems forced.
THE luchador armed with a diabolo, for example, quickly seems to have circled the ring. This is an impression that remains in most of the combat skits: despite the energy displayed by the performers and their obvious acrobatic talent, none manages to arouse real emotions.
The lack of relief of the characters does not help: the distinction between the villains and the heroes who parade essentially boils down to their costume. One seems interchangeable with the other and that’s a shame: without context, the public wonders why they should insult one person rather than another. The flamboyance of the costumes does little to mask the lack of depth of the characters hidden beneath.
The fight and its theatricality, however, do not get bogged down in the details: it depicts archetypes that the public enjoys hating, fearing or admiring. The Iron Sheikh and Nikolai Volkoff, for example, played on the American imagination by waving an Iranian flag adorned with the face of the ayatollah or by singing the praises of the Soviet Union in the ring.
SLAM! avoids these antagonisms, perhaps for fear of attracting scandals – a choice which, however, removes the jubilant aspect of the struggle: difficult for the public to identify with anyone and to know why they should insult so-and-so rather than so-and-so. Without the recorded cheers and boos broadcast in the background during the fights, the pugilists would sometimes appear very alone despite their efforts to harangue the crowd to break down the fourth wall.
Especially since the wrestlers enter the ring without any context.
There are, however, two commentator characters in the group who could have served to give some clues to the public – unfortunately, the show has chosen incomprehension by adorning them with a voice that is sometimes strident, sometimes nagging. The gag falls flat and is poorly explained since the only words of the show are reduced to gibberish. For what ? The mystery remains as complete as the precise number of reincarnations of the Undertaker.
Belonging to the pugilists becomes all the more difficult as they all have an English or Spanish-speaking name. Quebec, however, has produced more than its share of strong men and famous wrestlers. You will obviously have to visit the Museum of Civilization and its exhibition Struggle. Quebec in the arenaproduced in collaboration with Robert Lepage, to find out.
SLAM! sometimes seems to drag himself into the cables by trying to do too much. It is often when the circus takes full responsibility, in a more conventional act and without the artifices of wrestling, that the show seems most successful. Despite all the excess displayed by the pugilists, it is ironically the janitor, the least flamboyant character of the group, who steals the show with a tightrope walking act – and this, without ever stepping into the ring…
SLAM! is presented from March 5 to 9 at Le Diamant, and from March 19 to April 7 at La Tohu.