Ever wanted to be a fly on the wall in the buildup to a wedding?” invites the blurb. Never in my wildest nightmares. Yet here is an unusually enticing prospect: the chance to see matrimonial drama unfold live in a London hotel, and leave before the DJ plays Mr Brightside.
Dante or Die’s site-specific production, at the four-star Malmaison, arrives as part of the Barbican’s efforts to think outside the black box while its theatre is shut for renovations for three months. Six suites, 12 actors, six groups of 12 spectators divided in the hotel lobby through colour-coded corsages. We shuffle along a corridor and in and out of doors behind which members of the wedding party are trying to contain their various crises while a voiceless cleaner (Terry O’Donovan, Dante or Die’s co-artistic director) tidies up their mess (literal, in the best man’s case). Participation is discouraged, patience – and polite jostling – required: move fast enough, and you might get a seat on the toilet lid.
My group begins with the bridal room and the sound of overexcited women scream-singing to Raye. So immersion theatre becomes exposure therapy: only for friendship I would endure such stifling conditions, but here I am, voluntarily. Claustrophobia, however, is key. There is the growing feeling, as we move from room to room, that the players within them are trapped by circumstance: a tight dress, an unhappy marriage, a body diminished by illness. Also, a solemn commitment – will the bride and groom go through with it? Restlessness catches: as with all weddings, we the audience find there is a little too much waiting around for things to happen, too many glances shared with strangers, and obedient, generous staring into the middle distance.
This is theatre so intimate you can smell an actor’s sweat; the bride’s something blue was very nearly my biro ink on here dress
This is theatre so intimate you can smell an actor’s sweat; the bride’s something blue was very nearly my biro ink on here dress
But then, when it happens, what a thrill it is to see the action close-up: wet cheeks and panicked eyes, an illicit kiss in the plainest sight before us. This is theatre so intimate you can smell an actor’s sweat; the bride’s something blue was very nearly my biro ink on her dress. The unflappable, entirely natural cast are faultless: Geof Atwell, as a non-verbal grandfather slumped half-naked in his wheelchair, stirs something closer to devastation than pathos; Manish Gandhi as the best man injects needed comedy, practising his speech and cheesy smile in the bathroom mirror (“If I take the ket bit out it’s alright, isn’t it?”). The actors repeat these scenes six times a night; it is a wonder they feel fresh.
I Do is a feat of imaginative, logistically demanding stagecraft, but it is also a plot short of a play. A jigsaw of vignettes, constrained by design, it builds neither a complete nor vivid picture, and ends – energy waning – in anticlimax. How very like a wedding. And how fitting, that novelty should play its cautionary role: in theatre as in relationships, it is always so much fun at the start.
Dante or Die: I Do runs at Malmaison hotel, London, until 8 February. Then touring Reading and Manchester until 22 February
Photograph by Greta Zabulyte
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