Hailing from Bath, Mikhail Asanovic and Jake Wright are two guitarists that together make up the Showhawk Duo. Having met two years ago, these two buskers return to the Fringe with their own show that takes the audience through almost every current genre and a few that they themselves have made.
Both are skilled guitar players and they display the guitar’s appeal to people of all walks of life, with Asanovic being classically trained, while Wright is from a rock metal background. The main premise of the show is that the duo takes instrumental versions of famous songs and applies their own twist to them using their acoustic guitars. Whilst not especially original, these creations are very well-played and extremely good fun. Their cover of The Who’s ‘Pinball Wizard’ in particular had the crowd stirring. Mixed in with the familiar favourites were medleys of both the Disney and Classical varieties. The Disney arrangement took the Jungle Book as inspiration, seamlessly shifting between a Spanish style ‘King of the Swingers’ and a more bluegrass interpretation on the ‘Bear Necessities’.
However, not all the pieces were so successful. Their recreation of the Imperial March from Star Wars did not translate well as the majority of its power and gravitas as a musical piece was lost. In addition, their attempt to mix Celtic folk and Metal was admirable but did not come off well. This was mainly due to the fact they were only using acoustic guitars: the majority of the Metal aspects in the mash-up were tropes that felt lost on an audience that did not have a deep knowledge of the genre.
The Showhawk Duo show a clear mastery of their chosen instrument and their show is a love song to what can be achieved with it. It is for the most part extremely accessible and most importantly, tremendously entertaining.
