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Sticky - Press Reviews The first thing you are aware of is the noise. It sounds both familiar and strange, like the effort of 1,000 insect wings flapping. Then you suddenly realise what it is: the sound of hundreds of feet of sticky tape being unwound. Improbable Theatre has already explored the possibilities of sticky tape as a design tool in 70 HILL LANE, and now they transfer the skills learned there to the big outdoors. The sheer scale of this piece is thrilling. It is like watching somebody build the pyramids or the Eiffel Tower, although in Saturday night's high winds, perhaps the leaning tower of Pisa would be more like it. Fragility is one of the keynotes of the evening. There are plenty of crowd-pleasing fireworks, but what sets this apart from mere spectacle is metaphor. The sticky tape edifice miraculously rises from the ground but the human effort involved is incredible. It sways against the night sky, ethereal, beautiful and mysterious, its top looking like an exquisite spun sugar cap. Thirty minutes later, it is gone, destroyed in a blaze of gunpowder, shooting stars and Catherine wheels. All that effort for nothing. It makes humans seem like mayflies or the delicate blue-winged insect that flies inside the sticky tape tower, beating her wings desperately against its sides. There is wit at work here, too: at one point the tower is transformed into an incendiary Big Ben, time destroying all in its path. Improbable has also learned the lesson that this kind of large outdoor event requires a very strong element of secular ritual and magic. Figures move across the landscape conjuring fire, the loudspeakers blare out stirring music of the kind that makes religion or fascism seem attractive, the big bangs are cleverly spaced against quieter more reflective moments. You would think that Improbable had been making outdoor theatre for years. At the end, the tower blazes and collapses. Balloons drift lazily across the night sky like little bubbles or like the O-gape of surprise that your mouth makes when you've just witnessed something amazing and quite unexpected. High winds streaking across the Joondalup oval at the weekend made life difficult for the creative team behind STICKY. The spectacular construction made entirely of sticky tape. Nevertheless, the Festival performance was an intriguing blend of sound and light theatre and engineering skills of the most inexplicable kind. STICKY begins with a team of workers unspooling lines of Sticky tape strung across the oval towards the stage. The noise resembles a giant team of insects gathering at a nest. Like some gigantic spinning machine the sticky tape is gathered into a huge dome shape centre stage, which is then raised by crane towards the sky. At first it appears like some gigantic bug spinning itself into existence, but with the clever lighting behind it, this delicate structure emerges as a bell or clock tower, its struts and cross sections buffeted by the winds. How this is done is not obvious to the audience seated on the oval, but the fact that the creative team has called itself Improbable may give some idea of its innovative origins. It does seem improbable that an entire edifice reaching for the sky could be made of sticky tape, but in the best traditions of the Festival STICKY is designed to puzzle as well as delight. Once the tower has been raised a human figure in the guise of an insect with a big proboscis is lifted high into the sky by crane and transferred to its insides- rather like an insect sucked in to a huge spider’s web. The construction of the tower is accompanied by a dazzling fireworks display, with catherine wheels spinning from the tower itself. Quite how that is completed given the fragile nature of the structure is another point of puzzlement and awe. At the base of the structure are cogs and wheels again made out of sticky tape, which are turned by the workers in a scenario reminiscent of an assembly line- though this time with the fragility of opaque tape. The spectacle s accompanied by a pulsing soundtrack which occasionally sweeps majestically into sections of Gorecki’s famous Symphony of Sorrows. But such fragile objects as a tower of sticky tape are not destined to last- and it is finally destroyed in a blaze of shooting stars and fireworks. Balloons fly high into the sky as the wind whips away the last vestiges of this incredible construction. STICKY is one of those experiences that will linger in the memory. The big question is: what does Improbable create in the future to top this experience? Whatever it is, let’s hope it comes to another Festival. This large- scale outdoor spectacle by Improbable at the Sutton Lawn Pleasure Grounds is quite simply the most awesome and joyous I have seen in my life. STICKY is performed as darkness falls. It begins with a cacophony of sound, light and smoke, before the weaving of a giant web from taut strips of Sellotape streaming from a purposeful procession of actor/ technicians. They add great silver wings, legs and antennae to create a gyrating insect at the heart of the stage. Then, in a moment of pure intensity, a giant crane swings in the suspended figure of a fly, powerless to resist the trap. Moving on a highway of light across the night sky, this gossamer, fairy- like figure is breathtakingly beautiful. Sellotape and light then combine to create a stunning pagoda, a gilded cage from which the insect struggles to escape. A choreography of pyrotechnics, shooting flames, cogwheels and a donkey engine create the power that propels it to freedom. Lifted into the heavens by the crane, it trails a sparkling cloud of fairy dust. At its most profound, the piece is about resurrection, the victory of good over evil, light over darkness. But the most moving and triumphant things about it was that it was experienced by hundreds of families just expecting fireworks at the end of the Ashfield Show but honoured with a massive work of art. Thousands of feet of sticky tape create a web in which a giant spider waits… To the haunting sound of an opera diva, a human fly spirals down from 100 feet in the sky, and the trap collapses around it. Suddenly, a delicate quivering tower of transparent tape arises from the tangled mess. It hovers in the sky, lit blood red and bone white – a leaning tower of Babel, a minaret, an onion- domed Russian spire. As fireworks cascade around this fragile structure it becomes the skeleton of a clock tower, cogs whirring and fire pulsating at its core. This remarkable sight evokes many different images as it evolves and twists at the hands of a team of blue- helmeted wizards. The climax of this outdoor ballet (it’s choreographed to perfection, not a sparkler nor a length of tape out of place) is a carnival of fire out of which the almost forgotten fly emerges, like a phoenix from the ashes. It soars above us, surrounded by a flock of balloon, to scatter stardust on a star struck crowd. Somewhere today those balloons settle in trees far outside the city limits spreading STICKY’s magic all over the city. What a spectacle to launch the Festival!