Journey to the dark underbelly of Perth cabaret, performance art, and avant-garde surrealism. Welcome to Worship – the Gilded Edition.
Foxglove Productions make a return to FRINGE WORLD after premiering Worship (the ungilded) last year.
Their works veer towards the dark, twisted, and uncomfortable – always a wild ride, never dull, never boring.
This year’s show – it is unnerving, captivating, glorious, and jarring, all concurrently. The music is industrial, gothic; overwhelming for a good portion of the runtime. It reaches down to the depths of the stomach, to the oldest parts of the brain, to the guttural/animalistic, yes/no, flight/fight reactions of the primordial ooze.
Almost all the aspects of a regular variety show are here, there’s circus, singing, and burlesque, with costuming to absolutely die for, but they’re not quite fitting right – as if the stage tipped 90 or 270 degrees, and even then, the horizon remained askew.
There is no MC to guide the audience in gently. This is high art, in capital letters. The acts are mournful, angular, jagged, obsessed. And it all works.
Is that character supposed to be minotaur or robot? Maybe both? Is that a sense of foreboding doom, or inspiration? It can be felt, the very essence of the performance, down to the marrow of bones. This is not something that can be switched off from for five minutes, then caught up with again easily. It requires engagement. It requires complicity.
The feeling that everything will crash down in an instant. That art is subversive, dirty, even ugly. A cabaret at the end of the world.
This will not be a show for everyone. This is not the one to take your group of random workmates to, nor the first ever Fringe show to suggest to a brand spanking newbie.
Some people love 2001: A Space Odyssey. Others love Twin Peaks. Worship is a visceral experience, defying linear explanation in much the same way.
Essie Foxglove, our High Priestess, alongside her collaborators and acolytes, bring these dark, beautiful visions to us, nailing them, every single time.