Review: Paradise City

Review: Paradise City
Branch Nebula and Performing Lines

If you ever walk down Oxford Street towards the city at night you eventually get to the Downing Centre diagonally opposite Hyde Park and just near the corner of Elizabeth Street.

During the day, this building is a hive of activity with crims, wigs and cameras but once the sun retreats from the city, creatures of another sort take over the grand stairways and foyer of the judicial precinct.

The defendants with their ciggies and mullets give way to a hooded collective of rappers, break dancers, beat boxes and skaters, as they create a stage set against the Victorian architecture of old Mark Foy's department stores.

No one seems to mind that they take over the building. There isn't the token bored security guard to come up and pester them away and the kids are left to their own devices, entertaining themselves.

I always catch them in the corner of my eye whenever I wander down the street - usually with a flash of shadows, spinning torsos and silver Adidas jackets. And if they aren't there of an evening I feel like something is missing, that something has been lost.

It was these kids that came to mind while I was watching Branch Nebula's brilliant Paradise City over the weekend.

Paradise City is like a journey through an urban landscape where you catch snippets of the young using cement as a playground. It's a world where gravity is defied and physics turned upside down.

Directed by Lee Wilson and designed by Mirabelle Wouters, the performance brings together an urban collective of everything you might see from Bankstown to the centre of town. With a break-dancer (Anthony “Lamaroc” Lawang), BMX rider (Simon O’Brien), skateboarder (Petera Hone), acrobat (Alexandra Harrison) and dancer (Kathryn Puie) they take over what could be a skate ramp behind any building or in any back street alley.

The bodies emerge from the space like flowers sprouting through a crack in the wall and the game playing begins. There are moments of solitude where the players just do their own thing. There are other times when they taunt, play or physically heckle one another.

Striking through the middle of them all is what is described as the 'fallen diva' (Inga Liljeström) who drapes the scenes with her ephemeral vocals while prancing through the space.

It is one of the most exciting pieces of theatre on at the moment in Sydney and not just because of the energy of the piece or the unquestionable skills of the performers, but because of the unique way it captures life on the street with such verve.

Such is the excellence of the performers you often find yourself agog at their agility and skill and there isn't a weak link among them. Flying in between each other and swirling in the space, they seem at one with their urban construction just like those rappers I come across outside the court buildings.

Having already been on an extensive tour throughout Australia including a premiere season at the Sydney Opera House and an international tour to Brazil, Paradise City is testament to the strength of our physical theatre industry. And by god there needs to be more of it.




Until 7 June at Performance Space, CarriageWorks
and then 10 and 11 June at Casula Powerhouse
www.performinglines.org.au