Festival theatre
FOOD, The Studio
FOUR STARS
American Geoff Sobelle is an absurdist theatre maker – or clown, if you prefer – who’s best known to Edinburgh International Festival audiences as the creator of 2018 production HOME, an examination (in his own inimitable style) of all things to do with the domestic.
This new solo show is no less wide-ranging, its subject no less politically, socially or psychologically fertile – possibly more so, as it relates to the stuff that keeps us alive and which we grow, manufacture or (look away now vegans) breed, catch and farm on an industrial scale.
Sobelle’s stage is actually a massive table, dressed in a huge linen tablecloth and with glasses, plates and cutlery set out for the 30 or so audience members seated around it. Chet Baker plays as we enter and above the table hangs a massive chandelier made from plastic cups, bottles and shards of plastic packaging. Sobelle, in his waiter’s outfit of crisp white shirt, waistcoat and trousers, busies himself with trays and drinks trolleys then serves everyone a glass of wine. And so we begin.
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What follows never punches quite as hard as it might, though there are gestures aplenty towards the bigger issues surrounding food. Sobelle tackles gluttony, runs us through the history of homo sapiens’ discovery of hunting, cooking and cereal cultivation, plonks mikes down in front of audience members and has them talk about food and memory, and in the grimy, dusty final section whips off the tablecloth to reveal an expanse of soil from which he produces items which expand and comment on that story. Here, then, is what consumption has done to the environment.
But it’s the trickery, super-slick staging, physicality and fly sleight of hand – at some points resembling close magic – which makes FOOD sing. Sobelle pulls stunts which have you scratching your head in wonder or (the subject is food, remember) pulling a disgusted face, and though I was only two seats away from the audience member drafted in to help with one of his showstoppers, I still can’t see how he did it. Quite a feast.
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