Review - Drummer Queens
★★★★★
A highly energetic, joy filled drumming performance that will blow you away is now on tour around Australia! In the same vein as Stomp and Tap Dogs comes a new all-female percussive experience called Drummer Girls, featuring 8 incredible performers (Salina Myat, Peta Anderson, Niki Johnson, Ned Wu, Lisa Purmodh, Georgia Anderson, Claudia Wherry, Stef Furnari and swings Sasha Lian-Diniz and Astrid Holz) in about 90 minutes of explosive, energetic (but family friendly!) entertainment.
The show is so new it had only been performed a few times prior to opening in Melbourne, but you wouldn’t know from how tight and slick the performance was. It’s a spectacle of sound, moving across 20+ percussive numbers mixing up drumming styles and drums, combinations of performers, comedy and character elements and incredible movement and dance.
The atmosphere is breathtaking – you’ll feel the catchy, complex beats right through your body, with the crowd leaping to their feet for a standing ovation, clapping and cheering along and snapping their fingers, with moments you help create the magic in the room with call and response audience engagement. It’s impossible to leave the show without a smile on your face and blown away by the talent and the experience.
The non-verbal performance still has strong elements of storytelling and characters, from the playful young drummer Bey-B (Georgia Anderson) to the comedic but fierce Rebel (Stef Furnari) and tap dancing, free spirited Freedom (played by Peta Anderson, a professional tap dancer, Irish dancing champion and the shows choreographer). We go on a rich, high energy journey through the personalities, their relationships, their drumming styles and talents as the cast run through full group numbers, solo performances, and duet and trio numbers. Complete with mime, fully choreographed dancing or movement of the drums and their drummers around the stage and incredible chemistry and playfulness of the performers, it’s an incredible visual journey, with the cast making beats and rhythms on anything on the stage (including themselves or just their drum kits). As the show continues to be performed, these personalities and characters will only continue to be strengthened, and any little kinks will be worked out – you won’t even notice as you’re swept up in the rhythm.
From drum kits in rock and jazz arrangements, electronic drums, marching band drums and drums from all around the world, the show plays with musical styles with ease, including a knock out samba style opening number, a tap dance and drumming mash up from Peta Anderson and an incredible drumming duet from Ned Whu and Claudia Wherry that had jaws dropped from the speed their arms moved to create these frantic beats.
The industrial, rock concert style stage design by Adrienn Lord paired with sound design by Michael Waters and lighting by Richard Neville create a larger-than-life sound that fills the Comedy Theatre and transports you far away from the tough year Melburnians have faced – it’s the perfect release and is a perfect, uplifting, fun night of theatre that has something for everyone. There’s a few issues as they get used to moving the industrial set around their new stage, but you won’t be remembering that, you’ll be remembered the floating platform and digital drum number from Rebel (Stef Furnari), with a futuristic, outer space vibe, the backflips and break dancing from Bey-B (Georgia Anderson), or the drum kit battles from various members of the cast – the energy and stakes keep lifting as each performance dazzles and continues to surprise and delight audiences, who just can’t get enough.
Drummer Queens plays at Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre until May 8th so don’t miss your chance to see this incredible show.
Future Australian tour dates:
Brisbane – 11-16 May – Lyric Theatre, QPAC
Wollongong – 8-11 June – Illawarra Performing Arts Centre
Perth – 15-17 June – Crown Theatre
Mandurah – 23 June – Mandurah Performing Arts Centre
Bunbury – 24 June – Bunbury Entertainment Centre
Albany – 26 June – Albany Entertainment Centre
Canberra – 30 June-3 July – Canberra Theatre
Adelaide – 7-19 September, Dunstan Playhouse
More information and how to get tickets – https://www.drummerqueens.com/
Photos by David Hooley | Supplied
This review first appears on Theatre People at https://www.theatrepeople.com.au/drummer-queens-review/ 3 May 2021.
