Phoenix Dance Theatre at Leeds, West Yorkshire Playhouse - April 2008

Javier de Frutos's new piece for Phoenix, Cattle Call is a wry look at the phenomenon of the open audition - those pens of ambition into which the world's aspiring performers are herded on a daily basis. I have friends who attend these Opportunity Knocks style events and in the cat-fights, the bitchiness, the comradeship, and of course the obligatory rendition of Una Voce Poco Fa, de Frutos knows of what he speaks. His collaborator, Richard Thomas, whom we recall (and some would verily crucify) for Jerry Springer The Opera, has provided the score and the result is mischief, madness and hilarity, with the odd expletive thrown in.

One senses that De Frutos, an engaging and often beautiful dance creator, has been carried away with Thomas's Springer-like excesses and allowed the camp, the glitz and the satirical theatre to overwhelm his piece. Such dance as there is (and it holds little of the work's seventy minutes) becomes subsumed in the goings on of a pair of rival soprano Divas got up as Zeffirelli's Tosca who carry the show with their bitchy antics.

Occasionally the dance breaks through by the violence of its means, as in the second act, where a pregnant Clemmie Sveeas is literally pummelled to death by her one-time partner in a duet that recalls in Extremis that between Princess Stephanie and Rudolf in Macmillan's Mayerling. It is telling that the dance to have survived most vividly in the memory, amidst the frenzy of Thomas' brilliant satire, is that which was pitched at the highest of decibels. Much of the remainder is gaggles of ensemble work, a nifty trio for a female and two fauns drifts into obscurity, and one wonders whether it is not a waste of the Phoenix dancers' splendid talents. Nevertheless, as a piece of theatre - perhaps as a Musical - it is great fun.

Ian Palmer - May 2008

PHOTOGRAPH: Dane Hurst in Cattle Call Gavin Evans