The Stage

Interiors

Published Wednesday 8 April 2009 at 11:00 by Thom Dibdin

Inspired by Maeterlinck’s Interior, Vanishing Point have created a startling new piece of theatre which has the audience looking in on a winter feast being held in a remote house in the far north. As Andrew Melville’s grandfather and Sara Lazzaro’s granddaughter prepare for the meal, their guests arrive and the meal unfolds, a disembodied voice passes comment on what you can see, but not hear.

The result is pure observational comedy. There is a slight chill, thanks to the guns which all the guests deposit with their host - the explanation of hungry polar bears seeming just a little too much of a euphemism. Nothing is really made of them, however. And even when Elicia Daly’s ghostly apparition - the source of the voice - reveals the future deaths of the seven diners, there is a nothing but banal normality to their futures.

The ensemble put in a beautifully assured set of performances of such humanity that any parallels to reality TV are only incidental. Here are six friends and relatives who, despite the strong relationships created by the company, have no more knowledge of each other than they do of Damir Todorovic’s threatening stranger, a new neighbour.

This is brutal and hilarious - the reactions as Aurora Peres rejects Barnaby Power’s drunken proposal of marriage are particularly keen. But as comedy, it doesn’t have a punchline. Kai Fisher’s set is impeccably created in terms of its detail, the dreadful painting, mismatched chairs and seventies table placings, but is let down by dreadful sight lines.