Interactive festive satire from the award-winning Duckie. But the ironies are not lost on Alex Chappel.
The latest offering from award-winning theatre company Duckie not only serves us a second-guessing of our annual ritual of overspending, overeating and overdecorating, but also uses the yuletide theme to get across a more general, perhaps more important message about commercial capitalism.
Immersed from the moment you walk in, and true to the Duckie style, the spotlight is firmly on us, the audience. Ushered in through the backstages by security guards with bright yellow hair and mirrored shades, I'm handed a programme which conspicuously “conceals” the words “we are going to exploit you” in its preamble; and after an ultra-silly song and dance routine introducing the main characters, we are ushered into the main stage, which is laid out not unlike a department store. Right from the start, we're very much part of the action.
From here we're taken through the labyrinthine set and one-by-one delivered set pieces disparaging one phenomenon at a time, laying bare the empty promises of retail advertising. The show looks at racial prejudice, the Faustian deal done when worshiping the retail idol, the slavery implicit in the rat race, and the disproportion in opportunity felt by the working class.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed, even disorientated at times and it's difficult to attend to all the spectacles on show. There are places which are overloaded and gems over-looked, as well as some places which are conversely under-loaded with content, just short of fully developed. But the message is often in the medium, and the very experience of being jostled around, put in small rooms with strangers, coerced and confused into buying or made to queue is all part of the show.
Like a supergroup producing a second album, the pressure to live up to self-set high standards often stifles. However, Duckie's use of comedy and satire to express anti-capitalist ideas is something the campers at St. Paul's or Finsbury Square could learn from. Doggedly resisting a preaching stance or a righteous rhetoric, yet managing to fall shy of outright empty sarcasm, is Duckie’s greatest skill here. It gives us both a poignant food-for-thought message and a good dose of entertainment to boot – all professionally produced and performed by a talented cast. Whether it is quite worth the £19.99 ticket price, in a recession and at this time of year, well the jury is out. That could turn out be one of the greatest ironies of them all.
Duckie's Copyright Christmas runs at the Barbican until 31st December 2011.
Click here for Theatre in London
Click here for Things to do in London
Add an event
Frieze Art Fair to launch new section for young galleries in 2012
Frieze have today announced details for the 2012 edition, their tenth art fair in London. Taking place...