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Chortle REVIEW EDINBURGH

You would have to be dead not to enjoy this show. It is an event that could tempt all comers, without ever appealing to the lowest common denominator. Bearing in mind that all good comedy does not have to be stand-up, this is superb pantomime, and then some.
It takes many of the forms that ordinarily might make your hair stand on end ­ audience participation, juggling, slapstick, men in bras – and presents it with cod-Latin panache that is utterly seductive; I’ve rarely seen an audience ‘get it’ so quickly.

Opening with a Spaghetti Western film pastiche the three actors Antonio Gomez (The Pretty ­ and how), Guillermo De Endaya (the Old) and Paul Morocco (The Fatty) are in the tradition of vain juvenile, silly old fool and the cunning clowning servant who have cropped up in European comedy from the Romans to the Renaissance and Shakespeare. But the joy of this is that it is 90 per cent non-verbal and showcases excellent flamenco skills, in guitar and percussion, deliberately cheesy singing and serenading and outrageously good juggling talent.

Briefly, the first section establishes character types and a little a group conflict, each vying for the attention of a
woman in the front row. Fantastic guitar playing whilst the instruments are hurled about the stage is just a taste of things to come.
This establishing scene is followed by another short (like a minute film) ­ a budding romance which becomes a feature of the show.

A percussion duet between The Old and the Pretty is magnificently upstaged by Paul Morocco. He has a Freddy Mercury quality of being impossible to take your eyes off: you can’t decide if he’s weirdly attractive or just weird looking. What’s not in doubt is his electrifying, energetic joi de vivre. Watching him traipse about the back of the stage in a variety of costumes with mad little props put me very much in mind of Eric Morecambe ­ turning natural movements and gestures into effortless clowning.

Each time you might think a scene is going on a little too long, which happens once or twice, there’s a swift change of direction. It’s a real kaleidoscope of visual comedy and effects where little sight gags shift and strike chords in your mind. But the key thing is that it is all so silly, in the best sense. It is inventive and frantic, magnificently musical and sends you out into the world with a great big smile.

By: Julia Chamberlain

Ol̩ Рan electric night of vaudeville
If you´ve ever wondered about the mystical connection between ping pong and flamenco, between Tai Chi and tennis, between love and grapefruit, then Olé is the show for you.
Juggling and flamenco guitar may seem an unlikely combination but Рwith some blues, rock and roll and heavy metal thrown in for extras Рthey make up the bulk of Ol̩.

Suspend your scoffing, however – in the hands of Morocco, Forcione and Russo it makes an electric night of vaudeville.
Forcione’s brilliant guitar playing is the bedrock of Olé, and is superbly complemented by Paul Morocco’s juggling and comedy.
The ensemble work between the three is superb – their poor battered guitars get a torrid workout as they are put through a routine which Westpoint students would be happy to match in their rifle drilling.
There are as many musical jokes as there are physical in Olé, as many subtle moments as there are over-the-top hilarity.
The capacity audience loved every minute of it, and so they should have – this was high class entertainment.

Mike Houlahan – The Evening Post

STAR CLUB

It was almost a relief to see these juggling, guitar-twirling, dancing nut cases finish their show, to give your smiling cheeks and throbbing hands a rest. Not only are these three amigos brilliant comedians and mindboggling tricksters, they are consummate musicians and could easily have made a career in that field. But, thankfully, they have not taken the obvious path and have produced a show at which the audience would gape if they were not laughing so hard. If you think you have seen good juggling, and haven‘t seen Olé, you haven‘t seen good juggling. From fruit, to eggs, to fruit and eggs, to flaming torches to a tennis raquet between two sticks, Olé is simply mindblowing. This Fringe Festival has so many good acts but you would be hard-pressed to find one that contains such variety and comedy, and maintains an incredibly high level of entertainment throughout. Ole! Bravo! Encore!

Rod Savage – The Advertiser

EDINBURGH FESTIVAL
AN UPDATE on the mysterious fire at the Playhouse Theatre. Fruit-and-flame juggler Paul Morocco is claiming that he started the blaze while rehearsing round the back of the theatre.
Circus manager Jim Rose, who has been shocking the country with his stomach-tourning freak show, says he would have started it if only he’d been in Edinburgh at the time.

THE INDEPENDENT

FESTIVAL EYE

SOME people are just accident-prone. At Brighton’s Laughing Gas festival, Paul Morocco plunged through the roof of his London ambulance while juggling. During the Fringe Cavalcade danger came in form of a 5ft-wide orange.
The outsize Outspan is part of Morocco’s act at the Gilded Balloon. In between juggling fruit and flaming torches, Morocco crouches inside said citrus and wobbles to the sound of flamenco.
During the procession, Morocco was delicately balanced on the rim of his orange (it opens into two halves) on the back of a float. As he bent over to check his guitar, the giant fruit closed over him.
At this point the lorry began to climb a hill, the orange rolled backwards.. and shot off down the road with Morocco inside.
The glass-fibre fruit, covered, fortunatly, with 5in of rubber foam, bounced several times before running out of juice in front of a busload of inquisitive tourists. Morocco’s pregnant girlfriend leapt from the truck and was relieved to find the fruit-obsessed juggler only bruised and the orange intact.

“I landed on my head,” said a pithed-off Morocco. “I’ve got a lump and I’ve scrunched my upper back slightly. I’m going to the chiropractor tomorrow.”

Adrian Turpin – THE INDEPENDENT

BRIGHTON FESTIVAL

GRAND showman Paul Morocco did not let a silly thing like a fire regulation stop him.
At the end of his act with the EC Big Band at the Old Ship Hotel, he took the audience outdoors and juggled with fire while standing on top of his ambulance tour van wearing tights. It all ended with him falling spectacularly through its roof in a blaze of glory.
Earlier in the night he rolled on to the stage as a giant grapefruit while the other members of the trio, Alessandro Bernardi and Adrian Love, donned their outfits as a banana and a bunch of grapes.
All three are ex-Covent Garden buskers and it is their first show together. Morocco juggled ping pong balls, fruit, eggs and hoops, while Bernardi played Spanish guitar and Love nursed his food mixer.

Annette Mackenzie – Evening Argus

Fruit and nuts – MALCOLM HAY MEETS PAUL MOROCCO

Last week Paul Morocco and the EC Big Band arrived in Derry in a 15-year-old converted ambulance containing a grapefruit almost five feet high. Big is a deliberate misnomer. Morocco‘s support consists of just two players: a flamenco-playing Venetian by the name of Alessandro Bernardi and Bill Bailey, one half of the well known double act the Rubber Bishops. Together they‘ve created a show which involves “a new language of flamenco, fire, fruit and fibre”. We‘ll be able to judge when the flamboyant threesome drive back from Derry to launch their bizarre concept on London at Battersea Arts Centre this week.
Morocco, a 30-year-old American who calls himself an “organic juggler”, has a fixation about fruit. He learnt the rudiments of his craft when a fellow dishwasher at a restaurant in Virginia Beach taught him how to keep two or three lemons in the air. Within a month his mentor had gone off to work as a cleaner at a nuclear plant and Morocco himself was in Florida making out with grapefruit. Thence to New Orleans for Mardi Gras to start street juggling, to many other parts of North America, and finally to Europe.

He flew into Heathrow five years ago and on his first day here he was performing in Covent Garden. Now he‘s a regular at Jongleurs and plays other clubs that are large enough to provide room for him. London, he says, was an eye-opener.
“The street acts were so helpful with information, so friendly. In the States they‘d usually behave like dogs protecting their own patch. Living and working in this country had a definite effect. In Germany, for instance, they like their juggling straight, so they can appreciate the technical skills. Here in England audiences like to see you send it up. So perfomers here show great imagination. I was a fairly normal kind of kid before I came to this country. Look at me now. I‘m into all sorts of weirdness. I‘ve probably become a worse juggler. But the act as a whole has improved tremendously.”

So what of the other ‘f‘ elements? The fire comes in the form of flaming clubs. The flamenco was introduced by Morocco in Hawaii when he was searching for a way to incorporate a guitar in his act: “It‘s not authentic. I took two lessons with an ex-flamenco dancer.”
The thing in that Morocco‘s foot-stamping and howls, the macho posturing and casual arrogance, achieve a delicate balance between closely resembling the real article and sending it up something rotten. It helps that he looks the part. The Mediterranean features (and the name he uses) come from his mother who was born and brought up in Casablanca. His father was an American sailor from Louisiana.
The “fibre” is, of course, the actual content of the new show with the EC Megaduo. The story goes like this.
Three Fruitovision Song Contest Winners get together to form a band. But their differing nationalities ensure that cultural differences get in the way. They don‘t really understand each other. They don‘t even like each other. “It’s kind of a parody of what’s happening in the European Community”, Morocco adds. “lt‘s more cabaret than theatre. But we‘ve got a director. And costumes too”. The costumes reflect the characters‘ obsessions. No prizes for guessing the central image. Bernardi‘s character has a thing about bananas. Bailey‘s is a bit of a wino (hence grapes). Morocco‘s? What else but grapefruit!

With a bit of luck the show might also feature another formidable weapon in Morocco‘s armoury: his pingpong ball spitting. Is spitting the correct term? “It‘s accurate enough”, Morocco observes. “Mouth-popping might be preferable”. He holds a number of balls (up to four) in his mouth, the cheeks puffed out like a hamster. Then he expels them high in the air, bounces them off walls or nearby objects, and catches them again. The distance he can achieve is impressive, the velocity and accuracy far more so. “It‘s painful when you first start. Really old people would probably be great at it. It‘s easier if you don‘t have any teeth”.
The five-foot grapefruit originates from another of his obsessions. This time it‘s volcanoes. “I got into them in Hawaii. Our grapefruit will have fireworks bursting out of it. Fruit and fire. Spiritual associations too. Fruit and fire”.
Naturereignis fegte über die Bühne

Paul Morocco & Olé nahmen den Mund ziemlich voll
Die Aula wurde zum Epizentrum eines Bebens

HÃœCKELHOVEN. Keine Frage, sie nahmen den Mund reichlich voll. Doch übel nahm ihnen das fürwahr keiner – ganz im Gegenteil, da sie das Publikum in der Aula selbst daran teilhaben ließen: Zunächst stopften sich Paul Morocco & Olé jede Menge Tischtennisbälle in den Mund und parodierten mit aufgeblähten Backen das Macho-Grinsen des Spaniers, um anschließend die Bälle mit Urgewalt ins Publikum zu prusten.
Das nahm die Einladung zum Pingpong dankend auf und donnerte die Kügelchen zurück. Worauf das Trio diese mittels ihrer flugs zu Tischtennisschlägern umfunktionierten Gitarren wieder retonierten. Eine Szene, die bestens das völlig überdrehte zweistündige Geschehen auf der Bühne wiedergibt.

Denn Paul Morocco, in London lebender gebürtiger US-Amerikaner, und seine beiden spanischen Kumpels Guillermo de Endaya und Marcial Heredia fegten wie Derwische über die Bühne und verwandelten die Aula mit ihrer furiosen und absolut unvergleichlichen Mischung aus Comedy und Musik, Artistik und Tanz in das Epizentrum eines Bebens und lösten damit all das ein, was sie bei ihrem letzjährigen – ebenfalls fulminanten – Kurzauftritt beim Comedy-Festival an gleicher Stelle versprochen hatten.
Paul Morocco & Ol̩ Рein wahres Naturereignis.
Basiswerkzeuge ihrer “FlamenCOmedy-Show” sind dabei ihre Gitarren, mit denen sie sich nach Art des Italo-Westerns regelrecht duellieren – da spuckt die Klampfe auch schon einmal echte Flammen. Musikalisch dreht das auch darin äußerst versierte Trio den Flamenco, den es ja so sehr liebt, durch den Wolf und verwurstet den Stil mit Elementen aus Rock und Hiphop zu einer Art Metal Flamenco – und hantiert dabei gleichzeitig nicht nur mit Tischtennisbällen, sondern auch noch mit Früchten, Eiern und sogar einer Kettensäge.
Perfekt aufeinander abgestimmt sind zudem die Charaktere: Heredia parodiert bis ins kleinste Detail den selbstverliebten Macho, Endaya gibt den zur¨ckhaltenden Gentleman und zwische diesen beiden Polen pendelt Morocco und hält das Ganze mit einer fast schon väterlich zu nennenden Art zusammen. Immer wieder fährt er sich maestrohaft durchs Haar und tätschelt seinen fülligen Bauch – Indizien einer ausgeprägten Selbstironie.

Morooco und seine Mitstreiter nehmen sich selbst nicht ernst, und so hat der “Chef” auch keinerlei Hemmungen als stattliche Carmen im Folklore-Kleid über die Bühne zu scharwenzeln.

Mario Emonds – Rheinische Post 3.12.2002

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Show posted by "atyourcommand" April 18th, 2007