Through the glass darkly… And what do we find if we cross the divide? Heaven, hell, or a purgatory of eternal partying? Last Orders uses smoke and mirrors – literally and metaphorically – to explore its twilight world, a dreadful disco of lost souls condemned to a St Vitus’ Dance with no respite.
Dominating the stage for most of the show (once we’ve got a weird, blobby alien-birth scene out of the way, anyway) are two large semi-opaque mirror-screens that give a Hall of Mirrors fairground vibe and provide a kind of Pepper’s Ghost effect, casting figures in a halfway world between reality and illusion. The performers (four men and one woman) emerge from behind as Village People disco-queen parodies in orange boiler suits or pink lame jackets; with bone-white animal heads; or as fallen angels with twisted wings. They sleepwalk across the stage, or shake and twitch in solo anguish, or dance distorted versions of partner dances – deranged tangos and manic sambas.
Last Orders is a further collaboration between David Hughes Dance Productions and physical theatre director Al Seed, who is both choreographer and director of this piece, with David Hughes in creative producer role. Ideas and obsessions evidenced in their last co-production, The Red Room (a version of Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Masque of the Red Death’), are taken forward into this piece: most obviously, the ‘party, party, party in the face of death’ theme, and the development of a kind of contemporary bouffon in the parade of grotesque characters.
The aesthetic is very clearly Al Seed’s, evident in the oppressive Gothic gloominess of it all, and in the soundtrack, which veers from Ornette Coleman style free jazz, to scrambled voice recordings that sound like relays from the moon, to distorted disco beats – with the odd Scottish folk tune thrown in for good measure. A recurring sound motif is a distressed rendering of bubblegum classic ‘Yummy Yummy Yummy I’ve Got Love in my Tummy’: a perfect herald for a cannibal. For Last Orders is, apparently, inspired by the sixteenth-century Scottish myth of cannibal Sawney Bean, transposed into a modern tale of a sexual predator who feeds off younger flesh. I’m not sure what of the original narrative of Sawney Bean’s outsider life is intended to be read in this production, but little comes across beyond that key central idea of the charismatic monster consuming others in whatever ways he can get his teeth into them. Alex Rigg as Sawney is perfectly cast, a magnetic presence who overshadows his fellow performers by a long stretch. (He also designed the show, and is a professional printmaker and former blacksmith – a veritable Renaissance Man).
Al Seed has always been a sort of Marmite artist, inspiring devotion and derision in equal measure. I’m a long-term devotee, but found Last Orders less compelling then other work I’ve seen – even though it has much to commend it.