Suitcase Royale are back with a new bag of scrapyard tricks, and this time they’re up against zombats (half wombat, half zombie). Imagine trying to tell the tale of George A Romero’s Night of the Living Dead with just a few instruments and a pop-up set made of cardboard and wonky ply, and that’s pretty much how an evening with this Aussie trio goes.
With a rustic aesthetic and jazzy double baseline rippling deep through the speakers it feels as if the audience has been placed within a 70s B-movie. The Grogan brothers, Darren (an ex-cricket champion) and Mayor, are in for trouble when an unhealthy infestation of zombats takes over the Blue Lagoon Caravan Park.
A man called Stranger who wields a crumpet-launcher moves the plot along as we dive deeper into the ridiculous and absurd. Theses guys have definitely watched a lot of horror movies and they parody these clichéd filmic moments with great comic timing.
The plot moves at a strange pace as ad-libbing is something of a trademark for this company – they place great emphasis on trying to create an event for the spectator, which makes for a great hour of theatre but at moments can really slow down the pace of the piece. The injection of musical interludes is at times misplaced but still underscores the atmosphere nicely.
With hundreds of cheesy one-liners which work only because this Aussie trio are so good at getting you on their side, Suitcase Royale deliver another great hour of theatre comedy, but something tells me we still haven’t seen their full potential.