Event Review: Flatland
- Jess
- Jul 8, 2015
- 2 min read
A review of the two-day hi-concept extravaganza thrown by Nanaimo's own techno wunderkinder Top Men on June 26 and 27 at The Harbour City Theatre.
"Did you notice I skipped a whole dimension?" - Adam Barron
(Photos Jess Charmaine)
Leave it to Top Men to turn a sad story about geometrical figures living and loving in a two-dimensional world (circa 1889) into a techno dance party for the (all!) ages.
While not as much as a visual spectacle as past shows (aliens, metropolis, mad doctor), and the narrative more abstract and harder to follow for those who aren't familiar with the source material, Top Men proved more than ever with Flatland that they are an experimental band in the strictest sense. Lights, shapes, atmosphere, and body articulation were the elements at play here; for a kind of musical theatre never before seen or probably even conceived either here in Nanaimo nor anywhere else.
As with any uncontrolled experiment, conditions were not ideal - a heat wave, late start, Brendan Holm’s sliced hand - but they were more favourable on Saturday, and the show itself noticeably refined. An altogether weird one, judging by the audience reaction the experiment was an unprecedented success.
Audience participation is mandatory for any Top Men show, and as usual, Nanaimo friends and fans were very involved on and off the stage. People did their darndest to dress for the occasion, even taking the form of a silent masked mystery entity dispensing shapes and scaring the children. At the end, worlds collided and the scene erupted into what one can only hope and expect at any Top Men show: an on-stage dance party
One person in attendance was sitting still the entire time; Pat Carpenter, VIU's resident experimental music connoisseur, to whom Chris Thompson once submitted a blood-splatter-based music assignment.
"It was fabulous. Really fabulous," he remarked with shining eyes, and politely wishing to reenter his trance, "I think people are asking for an encore, so this is it."
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