I wasn’t really in the mood for this show. There was the pressing concern that a bubble show aimed at an adult audience was going to be an hour of dick jokes tagged on to what could just have been a family show. How wrong I was.
You’ll never look at a bubble performer the same way again.
Bubble Show For Adults Only is a postmodern performance art piece on relationships and sex told through the mediums of slapstick comedy, burlesque and bubbles. It’s also very, very funny. Kurt Murray and Iulia Benze have taken all the tricks you’d expect to see in a family-friendly bubble show; smoke-filled squares bubbles, spinning bubbles, giant bubbles, and woven them into a bizarre narrative in which we see a relationship develop and then become monotonous before collapsing. There’s also asides dealing with sex, jealousy and a little touch of BDSM fetish. However, this isn’t an explicit or overly sexual show; the adult elements are played as bawdy fun and could almost be a childlike view of adult relationships. The first date sequence is silly and sees them quaffing bubble cocktails and eating bubble meals before a frantic and funny sex scene which is essentially a long, somewhat chaste, kiss as they writhe and contort around the room.
Later in the show there’s some genuine symbolism and it’s clear that Benze has a background in performance art as she takes to the stage in a death mask, clutching a tiny infant before producing a spectacular spinning dervish of bubbles. Both of the cast also have a flair for clowning and give great facial expressions and mug appropriately throughout.
However, the real joy of this show is the delight of seeing the soapy suds being used to create amazing shapes and we get it in spades. Used throughout the show, the bubbles represent breasts, bums and even more private parts and are jiggled and popped in some ridiculously elaborate ways. You’ll never look at a bubble performer the same way again.
