The Roundhouse is a large circular building at the north end of Camden Town. Though visually striking, its unique shape has often seen it become a venue without purpose.
Relish in the sheer exhilaration of this joyous experience
It’s been a railway shed, a warehouse, home to a theatre company, and a live music venue played by Jim Morrison. But in the last century, it has been closed for almost as long as it has been open.
Then came the refurbishment in 2006. The opening show was to be performed by an unknown company from Buenos Aires. Described as performance art with dance and drums, it sounded like a Blue Man Group for the new millennium. It sounded like the final nail in the big round coffin.
The show was called Fuerza Bruta.
And the future of the Roundhouse – and of live performance – would never be the same again.
The Context
It’s impossible to view the long-awaited follow-up, Fuerza Bruta: AVEN – now playing the same venue – without understanding the context.
Before social media had become second nature, a buzz built around the original Fuerza Bruta. It sold out on word of mouth, made stronger as people struggled to find the words to mouth.
I still can’t properly explain or describe the experience of seeing Fuerza Bruta for the first time. Not in any way that would give it justice.
There was a man running for his life, against a hurricane of paper flying in his face. There were people swimming in a pool above our heads. There were bodies, encased in velvet, trying to escape. There was wind and rain and music and silence. We touched everything. We felt everything.
It was everything that only live performance can be. You didn’t watch Fuerza Bruta, you experienced it. If you’ve only seen filmed excerpts of the show, you haven’t seen it. It’s like looking at a postcard of a far-off destination, and thinking you’d been there on holiday.
Fuerza Bruta has become a barometer against which other shows are compared. The company are their own adjective. If you hear a show is a bit “Fuerza Bruta”, you know it’s going to be good, but not as good as, well Fuerza Bruta.
The Comparison
Can Fuerza Bruta: AVEN beat this? No, of course it can’t.
Even if you didn’t see the original, it’s impossible to go in unaware. No matter how much you try to ignore it, AVEN will always be the “second album.” And you can’t lose your virginity twice.
Some of the show’s shortfalls simply come with timing. The world has changed at a rate exponentially higher than the 20 years that have passed. We expect more. We wait less. We lose interest more quickly. We marvel for only a moment before moving on and demanding more, more, more.
So, where Fuerza Bruta was a sum of its parts, AVEN feels more like a series of vignettes, served up in succession. As though devised independently, they seem to be performed as set pieces that standalone, rather than build off each other. When scenes seem too simplistic, or too long, we switch off and wait impatiently for something bigger and better to arrive.
It struggles to maintain the energy or build to the climaxes we hope for. When performers start to encourage the audience to "raise our hands in the air like we just don’t care", it feels like a new club trying too hard to be too cool.
The Content
The spectacle feels slightly less spectacular. The extraordinary a shade more ordinary. Both these sentences feel odd when you know the scenes being described. But having something to be compared to is a handicap for AVEN.
There’s a man trying to escape what looked to me like an oversized lava lamp, filled with paper. Four performers stride across, and dance over, the earth flying above us. A couple swim, fight, make love, on opposite sides of a glass box of water in the sky. There are butterflies, clouds, rain, bicycles, a catwalk. And a life-size whale with moving eyes, watching us as we gently touch his tail and fins.
All to a soundtrack, with a DJ and live drums, that recalls the Ibiza nightclubs of the 90s and 00s. The audience – a large number of whom no doubt returning to relive their first-time experience – are older and more self-aware, less comfortable with letting themselves go. Adamant we are only as old as we feel, we try to mask the aches that come from standing for an hour, occasionally bobbing our knees to the Black Eyed Peas.
The Verdict
Fuerza Bruta returned to the Roundhouse twice since 2006. It ran in the same Off-Broadway theatre for nearly a decade. It has been in Russia, America, Japan, Africa, Australia. Its success across Europe was demonstrated when they played the interval act in 2009’s Eurovision Song Contest.
Fuerza Bruta: AVEN is not that show. It will not have the same level of success. But that shouldn’t stop you seeing it while you can.
For those who saw the first show, seeing AVEN may bring mild disappointment. But it will also reawaken memories of that first time. Memories of more than just seeing a performance in Camden.
For those who have never seen Fuerza Bruta, just go with your mind and heart open. You will have to work hard to have a bad time.
For anyone calling themselves a ‘theatre fan’, seeing Fuerza Bruta perform anything live should be a rite of passage, an item on the bucket list, a mandatory to giving oneself that moniker.
I can’t think of a single reason why you shouldn’t get yourself to Camden’s Roundhouse to relish in the sheer exhilaration of this joyous experience.
