‘A finely tuned watch of a show’
I have an odd relationship with both matrimony and immersive theatre-the two cornerstones of Dante or Die’s recent London premiere I Do. I both love and hate immersive theatre and am currently engaged but unmarried, so make of that what you will. If my fiancé is reading this (unlikely), that was a cheap joke for the sake of the article; please forgive me!
Back to the task in hand. First produced in 2013, Dante or Die’s clever brains: creators Daphna Attias, Terry O’Donovan, and writer Chloë Moss have brought the capital a site-specific and finely tuned theatrical experience spread between six hotel rooms. Almost two hours somehow cover the ten minutes before a wedding happening downstairs, with some time-turner-type-shenanigans thrown in.
Down in the swish Malmaison foyer just off the even swisher-and more historic-Charterhouse Square, the concept is elucidated: we are split into small groups, given a coloured rose pin, and asked to down our drinks (arrive in advance, dear drinking reader). Our crowd had about eight people, and the largest around eleven, so you’re not too herd-like as you clump up the stairs to the first-floor corridor.
It’s an inspired piece of site-specific work, as everything is believably a hotel because… well, it is! A working one at that, with a packed hotel bar/restaurant in the bowels and bemused German businessmen looking unsurely at the small horde of flower-studded theatregoers.
Now, here is where things get a little tricky to explain. All groups weave around each other, experiencing the rooms in completely different orders and therefore completely different plays. A repeating and demanding backwards-walk routine by Rowena Le Poer Trench as the cleaner to a warped Sea of Love by Cat Power playing from her headphones is the only thing we see more than once. This impressive bit of choreographed movement (thanks Ayse Tashkiran) is the spine for the many thematic branching limbs, and although magnetic the first time, after the third becomes a touch predictable.
In each room a drama is exploding with minute detail. We have cold feet from the groom Tunde (Dauda Ladejobi) and the bride Georgina (Carla Langley) in their own ways. Elsewhere there are pregnancy scares, the reuniting of distant family members, the igniting of new love affairs and the dwindling of old ones. In these crowded rooms we buzz like flies on the walls, face to face with the action as the performers skilfully work around our creeping forms, only occasionally almost sitting on us (my date for the evening, of course).
Leaning on the side of rom-com and at points melodrama, Moss’s skill and attention to written detail saves the whole from too much romantic gushing. Our group’s tale finishes on a refreshing if sombre note, as the bride’s grandmother Eileen (played by Fiona Watson) and grandfather Gordon (Geof Atwell) show the strain disability and illness can have on a decades-long marriage, leaving them cradling each other over the arms of Gordon’s wheelchair. There is lust, as best man Joe (Manish Gandhi) follows up on a tryst-hangover from the stag do, and a good supply of comedy from the sexually divided bride’s brother Nick (Fred Fergus) and sister Lizzie, played with spark by Alice Brittain. A reunion of Georgina’s mother (Johanne Murdock) and long-absent father of the bride (Jonathan McGuinness) has sad weight, balanced by some hilarious menopausal/post-menopausal battling with the AC by mother and grandmother in their respective rooms.
Attias, O’Donovan and Moss have crafted a finely tuned watch of a show, ticking along and looping back on itself, playing with time and experience as you hear echoes of past scenes racing through the corridor. A few moments don’t always quite add up, and the over-layering of time zones within one room is the mechanism catching (although this only happens once), but that’s the nature of temporal trickery. This show has rewound my love of immersive theatre and, dare I say, love itself. Bring on the white tulle and caprese skewers, as I’m ‘going to the chapel and I’m going to get maaaaarrrried’.
Can them until the 8th of February or the tour in Malmaison Reading and Manchester Piccadilly! Click HERE!