Children of the 1970s may recall the oddball charms of Bugs Bunny Meets the Superheroes, a stage show starring Warner Bros characters never normally seen in the same frame: Wonder Woman teamed up with Tweety to foil Yosemite Sam; Road Runner exited stage left pursued by the Riddler. That mix-and-match spirit lives on, albeit spattered with blood and brains, in Tarantino Live, a blend of cabaret, rock gig and Secret Cinema-style professional cosplay. The show, adapted by Anderson Davis (who also directs) and Sumie Maeda, mashes together Quentin Tarantino’s films and their soundtracks to create a mega-mix of songs, speeches and severed ears.
In front of a raggedy screen that might have been torn from one of Tarantino’s beloved grindhouses, the evening begins with a Charles Manson disciple delivering the climactic monologue from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood about kids growing up watching murder on TV. He is interrupted by a figure on the balcony, dressed like a Reservoir Dog but bellowing Tim Roth’s dialogue from Pulp Fiction, who promptly guns him down. As a six-strong surf-rock band accompanies the action from scaffolding on either side of the stage, the actors spill on to the floor, cracking whips and swinging swords so close to the audience that they almost slice the foam from the tops of our beers.
All the dialogue you’ve ever heard parroted in pubs is here, from pocket watches to royales with cheese, though not all the excerpts are judiciously chosen. Taken out of context, a plantation scene from the ghastly Django Unchained and an antisemitic speech from Inglourious Basterds are mood killers to say the least. The murder of the stoner Melanie, so startling on screen in Jackie Brown, becomes simply tasteless: no sooner has she been shot dead than the band launches into Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time). The torture victim in Reservoir Dogs is absurdly reimagined as a hippy rather than a cop.
There are flashes of divine inspiration, though, such as when Pulp Fiction’s Mia (Tara Lee) dreams herself mid-overdose into the role of the Bride from Kill Bill. A split-second blackout transforms the stunt car from Death Proof into the gore-drenched vehicle in Pulp Fiction. And when Butch (James Byous) from the latter film is searching for weapons, it is Kill Bill’s O-Ren (Sha Dessi) who presents him with a katana sword as the leather-masked Gimp parps away on a trumpet.
It’s all very much in the spirit of Tarantino himself, who uses interconnected characters across different films, repurposes scores from other movies and constructs alternate universes where Sharon Tate survives and Hitler is killed by the allies. Seeing his work reduced to gunfights and monologues gives you a finer appreciation of the use of texture and bagginess in his strongest works (such as Jackie Brown and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). The film-maker is more than the sum of the sensationalist highlights collected here but it would be churlish to pretend the show doesn’t capture his tawdry, scrappy energy to a T.
• At Riverside Studios, London, until 13 August.
