It starts with an unassuming person dutifully sweeping the stage, solitary and intent on the job, momentarily looking out slightly perplexed as he notices there’s a room full of people watching him. He shrugs, smiles and goes about his janitorial duties. In a rustling swoosh, seven broom-bearing others emerge from the wings to join him.
As they go about their mundane task, something singular begins to happen. The brooms’ insistent whisking take on an unmistakable cadence, followed by a swelling sonic attitude that makes broom-pushing into a pile-driving, acoustically intense dance concert. Everything ordinary, boring and tedious about sweeping becomes an engaging feat of acrobatics, stage combat, physical comedy and cathartic ferocity.
So it goes in “Stomp,” running through Dec. 31 at the Broadway Playhouse. As it did when it debuted in 1991, “Stomp” delivers a spectacular display of percussion using everyday items as disparate as brooms, empty Tostitos bags, oversized inner tubes and rustling newspapers.
There’s not a word spoken in the show originally created and directed by Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas. Yet, as it was over 30 years ago, the communication between the performers — the individual moods and motivations that instill each crunch, ping, blonk, swish or stomp — is undeniable and regularly hilarious. The vibe moves from chill to thrill in the space of a matchstick.
There’s a reason this show has been touring the U.S. since 1995. It’s ridiculously compelling and wholly unencumbered by the baggage of words.
There’s anger, community and catharsis in “Stomp,” each emphatic beat part of a conversation. Sometimes it’s a convo among the players, whether they’ve synched up like a single gloriously noisy organism or are engaging in a kind of sensational display of one-upmanship to see who can do the most with a supply of sawdust and jerrycans.
Audience participation is important to several of the numbers, the ensemble skillfully wrangling the room into a two-beat cadence that was harder to get right than it sounded.
Using only their bodies as instruments — hands slapping, fingers snapping, palms hitting open mouths for a funny “oop” sound — the cast delivers a wild, interactive rhythmic rumpus that puts the audience in the position of Max leading the fantastical, ferocious pack in “Where the Wild Things Are.”
A post-modern swashbuckling ensues when a group strides out bearing pole-vault tall wooden sticks, the sound of wood smacking wood accompanying savage fight choreography.
Toward the final third of the production, several in the ensemble strut on stage sporting industrial-sized sinks hanging from chains around their necks. The heavily armored group creates a song of sloshing, sonorous strains. No one on stage is fully dry by the time it reaches its final coda.
In one literally escalating bit of unusual orchestration, ensemble members swing in slings high about the stage, banging out a tune on the set’s towering back wall, a sheer vertical space covered with pots, pans, corrugated metal and a decaying sign, “QUIET ZONE” barely legible in fading letters.
There’s a raw “hey kids, let’s put on a show” aesthetic to “Stomp,” but instead of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland singing in a barn, “Stomp” offers 21st century rebel yellers whose chosen method of noise shows that anything can be a drum set, and even an old piece of plastic pipe can turn into something spectacular.
