'STOMP' brings the beat to Sacramento stage

If the season's festivities have lulled you into a stupor, the hyperenergetic "STOMP" will get your blood moving again. It's been 10 years since "STOMP" banged into town, and gauging by the full house at the Sacramento Community Center Theatre on Friday night, folks were looking for a second dose of the high-energy percussion show.

As part of this year's California Musical Theatre's Broadway Series, this show didn't disappoint.

The energetic troupe of eight — six men and two women — was all about getting the beat. This bunch of street-savvy urban kids decorated their space with whatever they could find — hubcaps, garbage cans and lids, 55 gallon drums, signs, even the kitchen sink — anything they could scrounge in an industrial setting and anything that would give up a beat. That is, after all, what this show is all about — having fun squeezing the beat from any available object.

Just sweeping the floor, the swishing of the broom's bristles on the ground, to the tribal drumming of the handles, the group syncopated their moves. But it's not just the beat they're after, it's the rhythm, from tribal drumming to Santana-like riffs to a non-verbal dialogue between friends as they run the gamut of "instruments" that include plastic bags and rubber tubes.

After a 10-year collaboration between Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas, this percussion phenomenon, born in 1991 in Britain, has grown into an international sensation. "STOMP" has performed in more than 350 cities in 36 countries, as well as playing an ongoing sold-out run at New York's Orpheum Theatre.

This group of eight performers could pass for a grown-up, 21st century version of "Spanky and Our Gang" — an assortment of shapes and colors, at home in a grimy urban environment, adorned with car parts and corrugated steel.

Like young children, their attention span is short as they go from object to object, keeping the 115-minute show ever in flux. Sans verbal dialogue, they compete with flashes of comedic movement to find the beat.

They even look for some beat/dialogue with the audience. Friday night's full house was an enthusiastic player, responding quickly and not even waiting for the cast's cues to inject their own beat to the show.

Hands slapping dusty thighs and chests, snapping fingers and stomping feet are just the beginning. The troupe is ever moving, ever changing their instruments, from push brooms to shiny garbage cans lids, plastic bags and cigarette lighters, leaving nothing unturned in their search to find whatever beat anything can surrender, even the kitchen sink.

No kidding! When four of the men marched out of the shadows, their yellow Playtex rubber-gloved hands making music on water-filled, kitchen sink-drums hanging from chains around their necks, the crowd roared, especially when the crew drained the water (in unison and rhythmically, of course) from their sink-drums into buckets on the floor.

The group pounded big plastic drums to emit some head-nodding, toe-tapping riffs as stage lights cast their shadows on the walls of the theater evoking visions of Zulu warriors dancing around a fire. Just as quickly, they donned huge 55-gallon drums as stilts, beating them with long metal poles. They even worked newspapers to get a beat, intertwining their own coughs, sneezes and hacks into an amusing rhythm.

Looking through a bag of garbage to find what can make a noise, they discover: banana peels don't work, but clear bags blown up with air make an interesting sounding drum.

Count the ways to get the beat. "STOMP" has got the beat, and it sure is catchy.