With Louder, you should expect the unexpected. It’s a cheeky production that cleverly uses suspense and subverts audience assumptions from the outset.
The stage is dominated by a full orchestra, framed by floor-to-ceiling white sheer curtains, minimalist black staging and soft, warm lighting. At first glance, everything suggests a sophisticated evening of traditional orchestral and choral performance.
Sharing the stage with the orchestra are eight performers, impeccably dressed in black-and-white tuxedos complete with white bow ties, which appears to reinforce that expectation. But all is not what it seems.
As the performers move to the front of the stage, the polished façade slips away, revealing a barefoot, crumpled and unruly ensemble of circus acrobats, a subversion accentuated by the spectacle of Sarah-Grace Williams conducting an orchestra that is frantically working but delivering no sound.
From there, the audience is launched into an evening of comedy, mime, acrobatics, gymnastics, contortion and interpretive dance. The ‘missing’ soundtrack is soon rectified, and a live classical orchestra supports the action.
Louder – quick links
Louder: Gravity and Other Myths
Louder is created by Australian company Gravity and Other Myths, one of Australia’s most acclaimed circus companies, known among other talents for bringing high-flying acrobatics to the stage. The company formed in 2009 in Adelaide and focuses on physical theatre and performance. This production is made in collaboration with the Brandenburger Symphoniker.
Music is performed by The Metropolitan Orchestra ensemble, of which Williams is the Founding Artistic Director and Chief Conductor, a fusion of orchestral music and electronic dance music.
Williams is superb. As the acrobats pull off gravity-defying stunts in time with her baton, she also joins the onstage comedy by contributing her own interpretive sounds and popping on a sweatband to match the antics taking place on stage.
Louder: sound design & acrobats
The sound design marries perfectly with the quirky formations and weird world of the circus performers. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F major is intertwined with newly composed works from Sxip Shirey and Quincey Grant.
The musicians play a range of instruments spanning violins, horns, flutes, cellos, drums, keyboard and piano. Some of the new works focus on building tension or working in unison with the odd movements on stage, while many of the compositions accentuate key moments of fear and anxiety in the performance.
The acrobats include Em Gare, Hamish McCourty, Issy Estrella, Ash Youren, Léann Gingras, David Trappes, Skip Walker-Milne and Georgia Webb.
They are exceptional and will leave you marvelling at their strength, agility, flexibility and dexterity. Together and individually, they skilfully build tension and suspense by convincing the audience that any stunt they do may be beyond their actual capabilities and has the risk of coming unstuck at any time. But their uncertainty is all part of the act.
Time and again, they execute seemingly impossible feats before celebrating their success with mock surprise and shameless demands for endless applause.
A standout moment sees Trappes discover they can conduct the orchestra with surprising ease and with the movement of a hand or broken stick. Emboldened by their newfound skill, they turn their attention to the audience, who do their best to respond to every cue and point of the conductor’s baton or signal. It brought the Joan Sutherland Theatre alive with smiles and laughter.
Louder: challenging expectations
Designed to challenge expectations at every level, the smallest acrobat lifts the largest, feet find themselves in undignified places, bodies are flipped in the air, human sculptures are formed, and some find themselves in very peculiar and unorthodox positions. But behind what seems like random and chaotic feats is a well-planned, immaculately timed and thoroughly executed performance.
However, there are times that the narrative structure seemed lacking. At times it was confusing what the acrobats were doing and why they were doing it.
By the end of the performance, it did feel like the acrobatics were becoming repetitive and it felt that the production may have been more effective had it extended itself to include other elements or if it were briefer. After all, there are only so many times an audience can see the same stunt performed.
Louder succeeds most in its ability to keep audiences constantly off balance, never quite allowing them to settle into a single expectation of what they are watching. It is this unpredictability, combined with the precision of the performers and musicians, that gives the production its energy and appeal.
Even when moments of repetition begin to emerge, the overall experience remains engaging, humorous, energetic and visually inventive.
