TO Fringe Review: Die Roten Punkte - KUNST ROCK

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TO Fringe Review: Die Roten Punkte – KUNST ROCK

Posted on

6 Jul 2010

by

Brian

This show is my unabashed favourite of the Fringe so far. There’s so many things to like about Die Roten Punkte’s KUNST ROCK! that I’m not entirely sure where to begin. If you’re a music fan and are irritated that your favourite Toronto indie blog (this one, naturally) has been taken over by theatre reviews, you should do two things: the first is to calm down, things will be back to normal soon, and the second is to go see this show.

Die Roten Punkte is a two-piece band from Berlin made up of siblings Astrid and Otto Rot. She plays drums, he plays guitar, and they sing songs about things like bananas.

It’s all a terrific parody, of course, as Astrid and Otto strut around making a complete mockery of all kinds of stuffy, pretentious rock. There’s a pretty clear White Stripes caricature here, but it’s all such good-natured fun it’s fruitless to list everyone Astrid and Otto might remind us of on stage. The two of them flirt with members of the audience, dance, run all around the theatre, speak with artsy German accents, load their sampler with sounds from whatever they can find, and actually happen to be pretty good musicians, too. Their stage banter is terrific, and they speak just loudly enough when they’re away from their microphones so you can hear them bicker on stage. Their “mini-rock opera” is about the death of their parents, and their subsequent escape from an evil aunt and uncle; Astrid sings that they were killed by a train, while Otto is convinced their parents were eaten by a lion. They claim that to write their new album they spent three months in a bunker for “creative development,” and for days listened only to the sounds of things like water dripping into a cup and a brush rubbing against a pineapple.

It’s absurd, it’s silly, it’s loud, and it’s a whole lot of fun. Don’t wait until the weekend to see it; Astrid and Otto only have Thursday and Friday shows left in Toronto during the Fringe. After that, you can catch them at festivals in Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton and Vancouver. Check out their website for the full tour schedule.

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