Review: Shaolin Warriors, Festival Theatre

What do the Shaolin Warriors put on their UK entry visa applications in the space where it asks for a job title? Kung Fu Warrior Monk?

It's certainly up there with Ambojitsu Master and Time Lord as all-time legendary career options. But unlike a Time Lord, you too could be a Shaolin Warrior. Well, that's the impression given when the Warriors get some of the audience's younger members up on stage for a run through of some basic moves. In an uncoordinated and hilarious, yet utterly adorable, side bar to the rest of the show, most of the children in the stalls found themselves on stage punching the air and kicking out at the auditorium.

What most of them didn't appreciate as they spent the interval honing their new moves for today's playground debriefing, however, is the sheer hard work and dedication that the two small boys in the production have put in.

The hundreds of hours spent punching walls to toughen their knuckles and months learning new moves, developing muscles and killing off nerve endings in the process.

The narrative of the play loosely follows these boys from childhood to manhood, where they have to show what they have learned by fighting the other Warriors.

Cue a two-hour learning montage of disciplined martial arts movements, impressive head somersaults and spectacular feats of human endurance to an overwhelmingly loud soundtrack of Chinese music.

The ensemble certainly has extraordinary physical ability, often well camouflaged by poor direction. The audience's interest is regularly caught by events in the foreground that aren't as mind-boggling as some of the contortions by background performers.

There are Warriors who balance on the blades of spears, break steel bars with their heads and a trick with swords, a bed of nails and a concrete slab that will have anyone keen on a career change booking a one-way ticket to the Shaolin Monastery.

If it doesn't work out in China, though, you can console yourself with a Kung Fu hamster and copy of the Warriors' workout DVD from the merchandise stand. It definitely puts those plastic sonic screwdrivers and pink Daniel O'Donnell heart-shaped keyrings in the shade.