Faster, Fresher, Funnier' is the tagline for the revitalised version of the British percussion show Stomp. But does the 90-minute performance live up to this promise after being around for two decades?
In the first sequence, eight performers push brooms and reveal peculiar rhythms in the combination of softness and bristles along with meaningless language (swish, swish, 'a'right?', 'a'right'). These are bamboo warriors, fierce, comic and grungy, who make music out of everything including kitchen sinks (making for a splendid set piece of stainless steel sinks full of splashing water being carried like drums in a marching band of clowns) and a new piece involving all the performers wearing huge black inner tractor tubes which make terrific bouncing drum kits.
The eeriest sound is created by tubes made of rubber cut to different lengths and banged against the stage (and, in a deliciously urban version of slapstick, on one Stomper's head), while the performers are joshing wordlessly about who has the longest tube.
The latest update is probably faster and quite likely fresher - but it's certainly funnier, with all clowning possibilities pushed gently to the fore.
Stomp started at the Edinburgh Festival exactly 20 years ago. It was a spin-off of a TV beer commercial which involved street percussionists playing energetically on dustbins.
'We had no money, the show was 50 minutes long, and the suspension was a rickety old scaffolding thing with rubbish that we'd collected from all over Edinburgh,' says the show's producer Glynis Henderson at her North London home.