Siro-A are sometimes lazily described as Japan's answer to The Blue Man Group. If you don't know who The Blue Man Group are, well... we're too lazy to explain.
But we will say this: imagine three bald, blue, Charlie Chaplins spitting marshmallows at one another, and you'd be somewhere near the correct ballpark.
The Siro-A gentlemen - three main performers, a DJ and a visual effects dude - are perhaps more accurately described as "The Chuckle Brothers meets Tron", and they're currently appearing at London's Leicester Square Theatre for a short run (today until Sunday 11th January).
We report this fact because it's worth seeing if you have any interest in video games, Japanese pop culture, or migraines.
THE WHITE-FACED MEN WILL APPROACH YOU
In short, here's what happens at a Siro-A show: Before it begins, a group of Japanese gentlemen with white-painted faces will implore you to pose for photographs. These photographs will require you to pull a specific face or adopt a pre-determined stance (please... NO improvised stances).
That's the bit which is easy to explain. What's less easy to convey is the following: the show is a mix of dance, comedy and performance art, utilising inventive lighting and front-projection to the sort of bewildering effect usually reserved for hallucinogenic experiences.
Its simplicity is deceptively clever. At points, the performers become characters in beat 'em ups or platformers, and engage in propulsive games of whack-a-mole, Tetris and Pong. Except... none of it is real: the performers interact with the projections to become ninjas, or psychedelic special effects, or - in one quite stunning sequence - a giant disembodied head and hands, like something out of a Japanese RPG.
More excellently still, the photos you posed for will come back to haunt you during the climax, as the entire audience becomes part of the show in an extended dance sequence. Oh, how your peers will laugh and laugh as you jerk and twitch in time to the music, like some wooden puppet version of Thom Yorke. Thomyorccio.
THE WHITE-FACED MEN ARE NOISY
All of this is probably sounding about as much fun as having to endure the indignity of wearing an eye mask beneath which somebody has inserted a number of blinking, malfunctioning fairylights, as a bawling child hammers at a tambourine with a jar of pennies.
However, the shows are short - barely an hour - which is good, as it's difficult to know whether the relentlessly kinetic inventiveness would sustain for longer. There are indeed points where it's a sort of sensory overload, and you wish they'd just dial back a bit on all the noise and the flashing. But there are also moments that are surprisingly lovely and gentle.
Anyway. That's it. We went to see them last year, and thought it was well worth the tenner we paid at the time. You can get a better idea of Siro-A's frantic running and prancing in the video below.
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