Peacemongers

Experimental musical dinner theatre isn’t common, and theatre exploring the dark underbelly of bigotry and polarisation which expressly wants the audience to feel warmly safe is even less so. The People, which is a loose group of people centred around Morgan Rose and Katrina Cornwell have managed to bring a piece to life which does just that.

Most of the piece describes the timeline of its development towards an expression of what Utopia might be and the accommodations made for holidays and people going off to be in other performances and rejection of funding applications by the Arts Council.

The performers, who also contributed to the creation of the show, Samuel Gaskin, Kate Hood, Ibrahim Halacoglu, Soya Suares, Mia Boonan and Zachary Pidd work though their thoughts and concerns to imagine what living in Utopia might be like. Dilemmas are raised and explored. There is audience involvement through voting and interviews and a final sharing of dessert and music. The pace is just right and dinner from Moon Rabbit was neatly fitted in.

The lighting, soundscape, audiovisual inserts and music are substantial contributors to the piece and were mostly very effective. The mix which emphasised music over voices made the vocals hard to understand and some of the impact of the songs was lost.

This is a rich, energetic, humane and challenging exploration of possibilities for a future and is an invitation for us all to be involved in choosing the future we want.

Ruth Richter

Photographer: Darren Gill