The Body Tights Man Show - Fringe 2009
Live Review

One of those distinctive gems that make the Fringe that tiny but discernible bit more varied, Tokyo’s 3 Gaga Heads craft a memorable festival debut in The Body Tights Man Show.

Marrying hi-tech video projections with lo-tech pantomime, Tony Atsushi, Shogen and Pamai’s creations range from the breathtakingly funny to the touchingly rubbish, but they always surprise. Emerging like ninja gimps in their tight black lycra, occasionally supplemented by other body suits, they put their slight frames to tremendous industry.

They open and close with a couple of film homages – James Bond and Silence of the Lambs – employing nothing but brown paper bags. But it’s the projection of fly swarms across Atsushi’s face after the room is plunged into darkness that first properly illustrates what they’re about, a fun little set-piece that they amusingly milk by threatening to swat the irritants when they land on the audience.

A sketch entitled The Amazing Planet finds the trio in bright pink stockings, summoning to plinky-plonky music a variety of strange and exotic artefacts from their mouths, making them seem like nothing so much as bulimic Teletubbies.

Next up came my favourite sketch for its sheer bonkers incongruity, a pounding rock soundtrack backing the projection of a series of masterpieces, including the Mona Lisa’s décolletage, Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Great Wave Off Kanagwa, Warhols and Keith Harings as the Gaga Heads pushed, prodded and distorted them from behind a screen, ultimately culminating in a Van Gogh self-portrait brought smokily to life.

Other skits, such as dancing paper clips around a magnetic board don’t work quite so well while their moving target archery, involving a member of the audience, keeps you focused with its element of competition rather than the laughter it produces.

Elsewhere, they straight-facedly parade around the stage with marionettes’ heads affixed to their crotches, their yelped hails for the celebrities they’re portraying occasionally lost in their quickfire English.

Pre-encore, the big closing turn is a brilliant teamwork effort, Atushi’s body stocking manipulated by the others to move seamlessly from portraying Godzilla to Marilyn Monroe before a succession of film themes and characters. Marvellous, childishly entertaining stuff.