Benny
Davis' Baroque settings of banal 1980's love songs for Benedict Hardie's absurdist comedy,
Delectable Shelter, are so clever that I felt I was getting two shows for the price of one.
It's
the end of the world – well, of human life on Earth, anyway,
and in the best speculative fiction tradition a small family, with an
outsider to provide dramatic tension, is safely locked away in their
subterranean shelter. It is expected that their descendants will
eventually return to the surface to establish a new civilisation.
The shelter is a large
box, reminiscent of a shipping-container, mounted centre-stage. Walls
are painted in an eye-watering grey and white pattern of stylised
leaves, and a large reproduction of Van Gogh's Wheatfield With
Cypresses reminds inhabitants of
the world they have lost. Furnishings consist of a number of
ergonomic seats on castors and access is from a doorway in the rear
wall. All the drama takes place in this stage-within-a-stage, at a
double remove from reality.
As
this is on the Festival of Voices programme it may be assumed the
music is the primary performance, but even when extremely well done,
popular music in the style of different genres is seldom substantial
enough to sustain interest for an entire evening. In this show music
and drama are indispensable to each other, scenes in the shelter
alternating with performances on stage by a small choir clad in the
elegant orange robes of stereotypical Advanced Beings from the
future. The dramatic interludes provide a back-story for the unusual
choral pieces: the only music to survive was a book of 80's
hits and Bach's St Matthew Passion.
Delectable Shelter
is a delightful romp, pure entertainment. Absurd situations, a
ridiculous sex scene, shifting relationships between protagonists and
the evolution over centuries of fears, mannerisms
and arguments from the original group into important social mores
keep the humour going, although in the earlier, "twenty first century" scenes I found the characters slightly stilted and jokes laboured and predictable. Still, there
were moments of sheer silliness, the choral pieces were magnificently
performed, the right people won, and all in all I had a jolly good
night out.
You can see shots from an earlier performance and a video promo here.
Delectable Shelter
written and directed
by Benedict Hardie; presented by Critical Stages and The Hayloft
Project
Cast: Andrew
Broadbent (Reginald), Brendan Hawke (Grayson), Jolyce James (Tor),
Simone Page-Jones (Malory), Yesse Spence (Biddy)
Theatre Royal,
Hobart; 12 – 13 July, 2013
