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Norfolk & Norwich Festival Review : Gandini Smashed 2 at The Halls, Norwich

16/5/2022

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At The Halls, Sunday 15 May 2022
The stage is set for Gandini juggling , one of the early events of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival at St Andrew’s Hall. A mixed audience, clearly attracting all ages for this skilful, clever and entertaining juggling act like no other. It’s a return visit to Norwich as they performed Smashed at Norwich Playhouse, with a full range of vintage crockery - which was, well, smashed by the end of the show
This is Smashed 2, the followup, which has toured around the world before landing in Norwich. It is set to be more fruity than Smashed, and I am predicting a bit of a smoothie mashup by the end, if the last show anything to go by.

The scene tonight is set with a stage full of chairs and fruit. Oranges and melons dotted around the floor and 9 chairs give a flavour of what is to come. More accustomed to classical concerts, this 15th century Dominican friary hall is all dressed up with a huge lighting gantry bathing the steps and massive pipe organ in purple light.

As the jugglers came on stage, 7 women, bare limbs and dresses, and 2 men in suits and ties, strut across the stage with suggestive moves, eye contact with the audience as they juggle oranges in sequence, passing the fruit between them, over under and behind their heads and around their bodies in a perfectly synchronised and choreographed visual complexity revealing a combination of extreme dance and juggling skills combined with humour and fun - perfect for a Sunday evening. This is the first of several ‘sketches’ each with a different emphasis. that will make up the hour-long show. The music too, is carefully chosen to complement the largely silent sequences of tightly arranged moves, including a punk anthem and opera as well as popular classics.
There is a fair amount of sexual politics throughout the show from seduction to upskirting, explicit sexuality and sensuous touches though, as the men are outnumbered, they seem to come off worst and the women are triumphant in abusing the men quite severely it seems, without allowing the men much leeway. Throughout, the jugglers, male and female strive to disrupt and distract their fellows who keep going in spite of being man-handled and their routines disturbed. All takes place with good humour between them, as they carry on regardless.
Of course, oranges are easier to juggle than watermelons as you can imagine but a circle of women with the heavy fruit balanced on their bare feet rolled them about, not as niftily as the oranges but still an impressive feat - maybe this was the least successful sequence though as it also was hard for the audience to see.

There was also drama as well as humour. A gunfight uses red silk scarves to cover the stage with ‘bloody’ corpses with even the gun-person succumbing to death by red scarf. And darker still, the last sequence is a dramatic and relentless slow-motion death-scene played to an operatic sound track - the ‘beating up’ of one of the hapless men who finds himself on the floor surrounded by women whilst the remaining male turns up too late to save him from the grinning pack. Pretty violent. And very effective.

And yes, Smashed 2 - inevitably, it all started to break down as the previously organised and tightly sequenced jugglers went feral, squeezing and smashing fruit all over the stage. It started with a thumb inserted in a juicy and messy orange and broke down from there until there were watermelons and oranges musshed all over everything, including another beleagured man who lay spread-eagled and dominated by a melon-bearing megalomaniac torturess who threatened his most precious body parts.

Chaos reigned for the last five minutes until the stage was entirely covered with a sticky mess as predicted until the jugglers stood up together and took a 9-person, synchronised bow. Hoorah!
Looking forward to Smashed 3 already.




































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    Author Marion Catlin

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  • Home
  • Get Art in Norwich
    • Where to find Art in Norwich
    • AiN/MiN by Post
    • Issuu version
  • About
    • Art in Norwich Blog
    • Guardian Article
    • Norfolk Arts Forum news
    • Creative Odyssey
  • Norwich Galleries & groups
    • Partner contact details
    • Anteros Arts
    • Art Fair East
    • Assembly House Online
    • East Gallery NUA
    • Fairhurst Gallery
    • Mandell's Gallery - about >
      • Mandell's Gallery - current
    • n-cas
    • North City
    • Norwich Castle
    • Norwich Cathedral Hostry
    • Norwich University of the Arts
    • Outpost Gallery exhibitions
    • St Mary's Works
    • Tanya Goddard Salon
    • South Asia Collection
    • Sainsbury Centre >
      • Janette Williams
      • Sainsbury Centre Sculpture
    • Shoe Factory Social Club
  • Norfolk Galleries & Groups
    • Bircham Gallery, Holt
    • Cley Contemporary
    • Contemporary and Country >
      • Rock, Paper, Scissors
    • Diss Corn Hall
    • NNAC Norfolk & Norwich Art Circle
    • Holt Art Prize 2021
    • Houghton Hall
    • King's Lynn Festival
    • Norfolk Open Studios
    • original projects; PrimeYarc
    • Paint Out general info >
      • Paint Out Norfolk
    • Raveningham Sculpture Trail
    • School House Gallery
    • Skippings Gallery Gt Yarmouth
    • Wells Maltings
    • Yare Gallery
  • Art Classes
    • Art Society Norwich
    • Wensum Lodge
    • Royal Drawing School
    • Anteros Art Classes
    • Artpocket
    • Nest Project
    • Annette Rolston printmaking
    • Sarah Cannell Workshops
  • Links to partners
    • Original Projects;
    • The Yare Gallery
    • Artists' Studios around Norwich
  • Venue Map
  • Contact us
  • Get Walls
  • Past events
    • Ancient House Thetford
    • X Marks The Spot, Great Yarmouth
    • Time & Tide Drawn to the Coast 2018
    • H2O Art of Wet
    • Houghton Hall Henry Moore >
      • Henry Moore review
    • Paint Out
    • Lonely Arts Club 2016
    • Magnificent Obsessions
    • Norwich Castle Olive Edis
    • The Way We Live Now
    • ADP Riot Tour
    • Norwich Castle Sawdust & Threads
    • Ana Maria Pacheco
    • Hungate exhibition
    • Bacon and the Masters
    • War and Peace
    • Clive Dunn at Theatre Royal
    • John Craske : Threads
    • Art at Norwich Playhouse
    • John Lessore & John Wonnacott
    • Hidden in Plain Sight
    • Mary Spicer at Theatre Royal
    • Masterpieces: Art and East Anglia
    • Masterpieces: Art & East Anglia talks
    • The Tourists
    • En Plein Air
    • Martin Laurance at Mandell's Gallery
    • Wallis exhibition
    • Picasso
    • Studios in Norfolk
    • Norwich 20 Group 70th Anniversary
    • Concrete - an exhibition at NUA
    • SCVA Sense & Sensuality lecture series
    • Nicola Slatter yat Theatre Royal
    • Affordable Art Fair
    • Art Car Boot pictures
    • David Holgate obituary
    • Photography exhibition
  • EAAF Artist Profiles
    • East Anglian Art Fund June Gentle
    • East Anglian Art Fund Alison Henry
    • East Anglian Art Fund Jane Hodgson
    • East Anglian Art Fund John Christie
    • East Anglian Art Fund Red Elders
    • East Anglian Art Fund Julia Cameron
    • East Anglian Art Fund Vanessa Pooley
    • East Anglian Art Fund Kate Walker
    • East Anglian Art Fund Gus Farnes
    • East Anglian Art Fund Tobias Arnup
    • East Anglian Art Fund Tobias Arnup