The creators of AutoAuto!, which opens at the Riverside Studios on 10 April (preview 9 April), seem to have been confused about the term ‘car sound system’. Instead of a radio and speakers fitted inside a vehicle, they use the car itself to create music. Ditties from sources as diverse as Bach, Benny Goodman and, fittingly, Motorhead are played on a Vauxhall Astra Mk II each night in this unique musical performance.
The production follows the mystifyingly musical road trodden by 2007 Edinburgh hit The Table, which used wooden furniture to create an acoustic extravaganza, and West End long-runner Stomp, which prides itself on making music from mundane objects.
The inspiration for this production came to performer/creator Christian von Richtofen when he was working with students who had been arrested for vandalising cars. In return for attending all of his lessons, the students were given an old banger to literally bang… with baseball bats. In teaching them rhythm, destruction was focused into creativity and the idea for AutoAuto! was born.
AutoAuto! runs at the Riverside Studios until 4 May.
MA