Live Review: Tomas Ford - Rockingham Arts Centre

“You're in safe hands,” Tomas Ford suavely intoned as he entered the room wiping blood off his face. The Final Chase is, even by his own notorious standards, wonderfully irregular.

Essentially a one-man stage show where the plot is conveyed through songs, occasional monologues, grainy visuals, stage props and some grappling with the audience, Ford adopts the persona of an elite secret agent attempting to clear his mind of an epic “cocaine snoz-storm” in order to complete one final mission, although it appears that countless seedy misadventures and the sheer, soul-numbing brutality of his day job have rendered his task that much harder as he negotiates an existential meltdown.

The show features an entirely new set of songs very much in the electro-punk cabaret vein of Ford's previous work, and although picking the first single from the album – should one ever arise – is tricky, Where The Fuck Is My Gun is a clear stand-out, with a great electronic hook to hang his destabilising paranoia on.

Not a comedy, but featuring many moments of highwire hilarity, it wouldn't be a Ford show without some audience “participation”. There were plenty of flirtatious moments with both sexes and what might best be described as impromptu tango lessons, squeezed between his own edgy choreography, which probably caused the odd limb to pop out during rehearsals.

As the show staggered towards a desperate climax, it became incontrovertibly apparent that Tomas Ford isn't so much several steps ahead of the competition as living on an entirely separate planet, if indeed he has any competition, which quite frankly he doesn't. Perth-based fans can be assured that The Final Chase is well worth traversing the Kwinana Freeway for.