Soap at Riverside Studios

Riverside Studios and Circle of Eleven Present

Soap

Riverside Studios March 12th - April 25th

Directed by Markus Pabst and Maximillian Rambaek

Soap is a heady mixture of cabaret, circus and comedy which really will leave you all in a lather! Please excuse the terrible pun, this genuinly is a brilliant, sexy and funny show which leaves the audience amazed and wanting more.

The set consists of several large bathtubs and other designer bathroom accessories which the perfomers dance in and around in numerous imaginitive and cheeky ways. The central bath is slightly bigger and more stylised than the others and plays host to a glorious opera singer whose voice accompanies the action, sometimes juxtaposing nicely with what the performers are doing and sometimes adding a playful soundtrack with for instance the various classical takes on the ditty "splish splash I was taking a bath". The ensemble are all incredibly skilled and delight the audience with a huge variety of stunts which includes, the trapeze, acrobatics, dance, juggling, and clowning. Indeed the clown character adds a lovely dimension to the evening, creating a sense of inclusion and a lightness of touch to the whole show. In particular her sketch in a bath with a puppet hand on a lead was hilraious and endearing as was the contortionist skit in another bath. Another highlight for me was the foot juggler, which was as it sounds, someone juggling (hoop and a foam brick) with their feet. While that may sound slightly odd, in the context of Soap it was amazing and actually rather beautiful.

This is a company which is undoubtedly incredibly skilled and each of whom brings a hige amount of energy and slickness to the stage. There may have been times when it was ini danger of becoming a series of stunts but this was never the case largely down to the constant injections of comedy and humanity. In fact a trapeze performance near the very end of the show was beautiful to the point of being very moving. As one artist twisted and turned on the trapeze, rain fell on to the stage and the rest of the company sheltered under various parts of the set watching or looking out. It was a gorgeous image to end a gorgeous, fun filled, water soaked evening.