Keeping time with Stomp: let’s give it a bash

Telling these “Stompers” standing in front of me that I was a drummer was, in hindsight, a mistake. Although it is sort of true – I played drums in a less-than- brilliant indie band many years ago – I was never very good at it, and 20 years of not picking up a drumstick can’t have helped my rudimentary skills.

But as my masterclass in a suddenly swanky Salford – in the shadow of Manchester United’s Theatre of Dreams – starts, I can tell the Stomp people expect a lot from me because of my big mouth. They are going to be disappointed.

I decide I won’t beat myself up too hard if I miss a few beats. Because when it comes to using brushes, trolleys, matchboxes, lighters, bins and paint cans to create exhilarating and intoxicating rhythms , the people on stage with me are among the best in the world. I can hardly be expected to compete, but I am still going to give it a bash. Literally.

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Conor Pope bangs the bin with Stomp

Stomp is a marvel of the modern world. If you have never seen them perform, you are missing out. The show was dreamed up by Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas in Brighton in 1991. They wanted to create a percussion group to wow the world with a very unconventional show. And wow it they did.

Since then, various line-ups have drummed their way around the world. They have performed more than 14,000 times in front of 14 million people in 50 countries. They have broken more than 40,000 brooms and left dents in tens of thousands of bins, wheeled countless shopping trolleys to a rhythmic grave and used millions of matches and lighters to create an almost hypnotic beat, which is as exhilarating as it is primal.

Early next year they arrive in Ireland. They have two Irish members: Emma King from Newcastle, Co Down; and Louise Durrand from Waterford. King's route into Stomp is the more traditional one: she joined the touring party last January after studying percussion at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Durrand, on the other hand, has no musical background. This time last year she was teaching primary-school children in south London. She decided to go to a Stomp audition, after being urged to do so by a friend no doubt driven to distraction by her relentless drumming on counter tops and chairs in their shared flat.

She agreed to go along but thought she was only heading into a “fun workshop”. She had no idea the decision would change her life. When the Stompers, as they call themselves, saw her, they loved her – her personality, her rhythm, her big hair – so she moved from teaching ABCs to learning 123s.

“What they look for at the auditions is a reflection of your own personality,” she says. When she got a call telling her she had made the grade, she didn’t think twice about giving up her teaching job.

“All I was told was that I could come to training, and they made sure I knew there was nothing set in stone. I rang my teaching agency and told them I was leaving, because it was something I knew I would love to do.”

She was terrified when she took to the stage for the first time, carrying a brush, but her fellow cast members put her at her ease. “Everyone is calm and very welcoming,” she says. “There are people in it years, and their main job is to get us to understand where they are coming from so everyone can work together.”

Training day

The main job of Durrand and three other Stompers right now is to get me to understand what they are doing so I can try to keep up. “You will use the props we have in the show and you will learn basic rhythms,” says Durrand. “When you break it down, it is very slow, and you will be able to hear what we play,” she says.

I am handed a brush. “We’re going to do it in fours. And we want you to hit on the three.” I look bemused. I have no idea what we are supposed to be doing in fours? What’s the three?

It turns out we are going to sweep. Up and down. Up and down. The brush makes the sound of a soft whisper on the stage. Me and three Stompers, sweeping slowly. One. Two. Three. Four. We get in to a rhythm, and, when that is steady, I have to turn my brush and bang it hard on the stage. On the three. The three others take the other numbers. The level of concentration needed to get this very basic rhythm right is intense. Then we have to dance, first in slow circles and then in random patterns, while sweeping and banging. It starts to work. I am drenched in sweat and we have barely got going.

Then the stamping starts. In addition to drumming with the brushes, I have to stamp in time to the beat. It is hideously complicated.

King assures me I will get used to the pace and rhythm. But that is easy for her to say: she is a trained musician.

"I got really into drums as a teenager and I spent six hours a day practicing," she says. "I played in a band, and then I changed direction and started playing in an orchestra. I did that that for four years and then joined Stomp. It's like a family – a nice family – no one is going to be here if they are an arsehole."

We start sweeping again. As well as concentration, an ability to sweep without dropping the broom is handy. I can’t manage that. I drop the brush but King is reassuring. “The first time I broke a broom, I freaked out. You just need to relax into it,” she says.

She takes the bins out. The four of us strap bins to our chests like drummers in the Orange Order and we wallop the bejaysus out of them. It is great fun, even though I am rubbish at it.

What to expect

I ask what I can expect from this show. They tell me it starts with a foot-stamping broom dance, the very thing we just did.

“There are two comedians on the stage and everyone else is like, ‘What is going on?’ And they are making a mess of everything. They have a lot of contact with the audience.”

When I finally see the show, there is not a whole lot of over-the-top slapstick: most of the laughs are generated by raised eyebrows or inappropriate-sized brushes.

The show is mesmerising and will appeal to adults and children, musicians and dancers, and those who can’t sing or play.

“A music teacher can appreciate an amazing percussionist,” says King. “And then there could be a dancer watching someone move, and then the kids could get the humour. Even if a person doesn’t have any musical or dance background they are looking at it and being blown away. I can almost hear them say, ‘Look what they are doing with that paint can or that brush; it’s like, wow’.”

It is wow. Just as long as you’re not expected to take the stage with them.

Stomp is at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre from Feb 17-21