Scored by the found sounds of New York composer Sxip Shirey, of The Daredevil Opera Company, Strut and Fret’s Limbo- The Return doesn’t leave you hanging; you will fall hard for this.
Limbo opens with Sxip Shirey making music on the Spiegeltent’s runway stage, backed by minstrels drumming, singing and blowing into a tuba. It then introduces its cast of angels and demons aerialists and dancers. Shirey, who looks like a mad-musical genius, a Mozart in the Jungle or Mugatu from Zoolander, is Limbo’s ringleader. Shirey started as a physicist, before working with modern dance, circus, cabaret and theatre companies.
The notes of Shirey’s music don’t just float in the air; Limbo’s performers respond to them. There’s cause and effect, actions and reactions. While many of the big Fringe circus shows feature performers who have choregraphed their routines to match songs which have been composed separately, Limbo differentiates itself through its interplay between artist and composer. When a fire breather blows on the flames, the music blazes.
Shirey has collaborated with Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer. Like Gaiman’s Good Omens, Limbo thematically explores the meta-physical; heaven, hell, and purgatory. There are falling angels clutching feathers (and audience members’ smart phones), demons twirling fire or cracking flaming whips, cages of light and chains of bondage. Underlying it all is an examination of how we should live and how we will be judged. It concludes with the message: all that matters is that we’ve loved well. With its smooth transitions, which have been honed over a decade of performances, you will love this.
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