Tom Jeffreys is the guest of honour at a post-apocalyptic dinner party.
I sit alone. At a small square table, I sit alone. On it stands a three-pronged candelabra, an old tin box, a dictapohone, and a bottle of champagne on ice. After about ten-minute a leering, limping crazy lady delivers my main course upon a tray: a black bread roll made from coal dust, a scattering of desiccated butter, and, served in a battered old tin, a delicious stew of blood and meat.
What am I doing here? And what is in this stew? Well, I'm down here, under the railway arches, inside Debut, formerly SEOne, at an event entitled Eat Your Heart Out, part of the ongoing Coming Up Festival. The event consists of a collaboration between Birmingham-based all-female theatre company Kindle and brilliantly bonkers food design folks Blanch & Shock, and it tells the story of a post-apocalyptic dinner party.
Over a hundred guests are gathered along the lengths of several colossal tables, in the dark, dank atmosphere of Debut. Through a series of intense performances we're told the story of the end of the world and how society now lives. Actors with twisted skeletal make-up are positioned round the room, they sing haunting melodies, stride along the tables, dance and caper. It's entertaining to see performances taking place on the table in front of you – it's also amusing and ever so slightly sinister.
Our starter is laid out before us – a little shot of popping candy 'meteor-dust' and a serviette scented with the aroma of what seems like gunpowder. As the performance continues, it quickly becomes clear that, food being scarce after the world has ended and civilisation collapsed, the main course is to be made from the body of a specially selected 'guest of honour'. After some elaborate rituals, it becomes clear who is going to be eaten. I am the guest of honour; I am dinner.
I rise from my seat, climb onto the massive dining table, to be led slowly, ceremoniously, away, toward flames and fires, to be cooked, and eaten by the hungry hordes. Later, a coffin emerges, filled with chocolate 'soil' and edible pansies. Handfuls are distributed among the guests.
Having missed much of the evening, it's rather difficult to accurately judge the success of the performance. I had a surprisingly entertaining time on my own – it was certainly different – but I know some guests left a little disappointed. It just didn't feel quite as experimental or as excitingly unpredictable as my previous experience of Blanch & Shock – a memorably brilliant re-interpretation of Gordon Matta-Clark's Bone Dinner in Birmingham. Maybe the whole post-apocalyptic thing is by now a little tired as a narrative conceit; maybe it's a budget thing – this is the most pared down version yet of Eat Your Heart Out, and pictures from previous incarnations look significantly more impressive. Then again, maybe it's just that, when I'm supposedly the guest of honour, any dinner party is going to be in trouble...
The Coming Up Festival is at Debut until 4th March 2011.
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