If absurdist American theatre maker Geoff Sobelle’s new work ‘Food’ ended half an hour earlier than it did, it would be a dainty, a trifle, a mere morsel, an amuse bouche, etcetera etcetera.
For the show’s first hour, he plays eccentric maitre d’ to the members of the audience lucky/‘lucky’ enough to be sat at the large square table that dominates the room.
If you’re sat at the table you’re about 90 percent likely to get a glass of red wine and will likely be made to participate in at least one of a series of daft restaurant-themed tasks or games – nothing too humiliating – and you might have a plate of something basically inedible thrust at you. If you’re not at the table… you won’t, although if you’re averse to audience interaction you might view this as a good thing.
It’s all very nice: Sobelle is drily funny as a sort of simultaneously withering and sloppy host, and he spices things up with some deft deployment of close-up magic. It’s entertaining, perhaps more so if you’re sat at the table than if you’re away from the direct action.
But then that last half hour… Soebelle drops the head waiter schtick for a scene of noisy, rapacious gluttony, consuming vast amounts of food in what is both a prodigious physical feat – clearly but not exclusively abetted by sleight of hand – and something more disturbing, an evocation of locust-like hunger that seems less greedy, more actively destructive.
I won’t spoiler the final scene, which represents something of a coup de théâtre. But safe to say it takes the previous scene’s idea that gluttony is a characteristic of humanity that goes way beyond simple desire to fill our bellies, and runs with it, spectacularly.
There is, to be clear, nothing objectionable about the first scene, which is basically a languid hour of light entertainment. But its sheer length feels like it throws the show out of whack generally. The main course is delicious when it comes. But Soebelle does make us wait for it.