GODZ: Brighton Fringe. Head First Acrobats
The most fun you can have in ninety minutes with five demigods and a row of strangers who are all thinking exactly the same thing you are.
Let's be honest: Head First Acrobats always know exactly who fills their seats. They've been returning to Brighton Fringe for years now, touring the world in between, collecting awards like Hercules collects admirers, effortlessly and in abundance. And with GODZ, their riotous, gloriously sweaty romp through the pleasures of Mount Olympus, they don't just know their audience. They worship us right back. With interest.
The premise, a full-throttle, hedonistic plunge into ancient Greek mythology, is just an excuse, and a magnificent one at that. Hermes, Apollo, Hercules, Dionysus and Cupid descend upon the Spiegeltent and proceed to throw the kind of party that would make Zeus loosen his toga. There's a narrative threading through it all, technically, but GODZ has the admirable self-awareness to treat plot as merely the thin gold cord holding together ninety minutes of jaw-dropping physical theatre, comedy, and; let's not be coy here, weaponised, industrial-grade thirst.
This is Boylesque for the ages. Performative masculinity cranked up to eleven, dripping in knowing irony, flexed biceps and enough homoerotic charge to power the whole of Kemp Town. Not just stunning acrobats though Lord knows, they are that, bodies moving with a precision and power that amaze, they are also the festival circuit's most magnificently self-aware thirst traps. They know it. And crucially, they make absolutely certain you know they love it. Every held gaze, every slowly raised eyebrow, every apparently accidental wardrobe situation is choreographed to within an inch of its life, and the audience, a gloriously transfixed congregation somewhere between the Vauxhall Tavern on a Saturday night and a very sophisticated Magic Mike hen do, absolutely lapped it up. Tongues were, genuinely, hanging out.
Part of the show unfolds in a state of cheerful, matter-of-fact nudity, teased but daft and carried off with exactly the kind of confidence you'd expect from men who have clearly made peace, very thoroughly, with what they're working with. The acrobatics arrive backlit under sheets; if anything this intensify the nudity. Queer-coded moments accumulate throughout with gleeful, relentless purpose, looks held a beat too long, lifts that are technically impressive and also extremely something else, physical comedy that lands with the precise frequency of an audience who gets it, who has always got it, who came here specifically to get it. Technically brilliant and seriously funny.
The nuns scene, yes, there are nuns, keep up, tips the whole glorious enterprise into the kind of gleefully profane, transgressive territory that queer audiences savour. It's camp in the most rigorous, theological sense of the word. It's completely and magnificently unhinged. The whole venue lost its mind, in the best possible way.
Thomas Gorham's Apollo shimmers with easy charisma. Callan Harris as Hercules is, predictably, built like a small classical monument and twice as commanding. AJ Saltalamacchia's Dionysus brings an anarchic, delicious looseness to proceedings. Liam Dummer as Cupid is mischief incarnate.
But. But. Allow us a moment for Mat Piva, joining the company this year as Hermes, and what an entrance into the fold. Baby-faced, wide-eyed, projecting an air of absolute innocence that fools approximately nobody, Piva arrives packaged an architecturally ambitious body. Huge. Thighs. Biceps. A presence disproportionate to his cherubic expression. He is beguiling in a way that made the room collectively forget what city they were in, and his acrobatic talent is extraordinary, if anyone in the audience could concentrate long enough to fully appreciate it. They mostly could not. He is, to put it plainly, an absolute menace, and we are here for every second of it.
GODZ is that rare thing: a show that has mastered the art of the tease, giving you everything and making you feel like you've been exquisitely denied more. It's funny, filthy in spirit, ferociously talented and thoroughly, unashamedly queer & women friendly.
Almost every performance has sold out but the gods have smiled upon the desperate and the thirsty: a special late-night extra show has been added on Saturday 30th May at 10:45pm. That's your last chance, your one remaining opportunity, your final act of self-care for the season. Tickets are on sale now. Do not think about it. Do not discuss it with your friends. Simply buy the ticket, bring a hand fan and your best poker face, and thank us later.
They also have a family friendly show, ALL STARS, running till 31st May, check out the Scene review here.
GODZ — Head First Acrobats. Spiegeltent at the SpiegelGardens. Saturday 30th May, 10:45pm — FINAL PERFORMANCE. Tickets: brightonfringe.org.
18+. 90 mins with interval. Content warnings: nudity, strong language, strobe lighting, adult themes, and a dangerously attractive new Hermes.
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