‘Food’ Review: It’s an Acquired Taste

In an auditorium in Scotland, the American theater artist Geoff Sobelle is internet hosting a cocktail party. The stage is taken up by an unlimited sq. desk, laid out with plates and cutlery. Around three of its sides sit twenty-four viewers members. At the middle of the fourth is the waistcoated determine of Sobelle, who brings wine, palms out menus and takes orders. When one girl requests a baked potato, he produces a bucket filled with earth and empties it out onto the desk; he crops a seed within the mound, waters it and waits some time earlier than reaching in to tug out a big spud.

After a number of skits on this vein, Sobelle withdraws into himself and proceeds to binge silently: He eats one apple, then one other, after which one other and one other, adopted by a bowl of cherry tomatoes, just a few radishes and carrots, a regarding amount of ranch, various uncooked eggs, a complete onion and a few financial institution notes.

Sobelle’s one-man present “Food,” which runs at The Studio via Aug. 27 as a part of the Edinburgh International Festival, is billed as “a meditation on how and why we eat.” But, except for a brief preamble concerning the primordial nature of our relationship with grub, there may be little try to intellectualize. Audiences primed to search for which means will discover none right here: Silliness is the top in itself; the enjoyment is within the buildup of nervous power within the room as Sobelle carries out his buffoonery with the targeted dedication of a health care provider performing lifesaving surgical procedure.

Sobelle skilled as a magician, after which as a clown, earlier than turning his hand to absurdist theater. In a creative mission assertion on his web site, he declares that he sees his physique of labor as “a colossal practical joke.” This checks out.

Midway via the present, Sobelle fastidiously gathers up the company’ wine glasses, then returns to his seat and violently pulls away the tablecloth, amid a lot clattering of plates. Underneath, it seems, isn’t a desk, however a area of filth: The set is reworked into one massive muddy panorama. A distant management tractor trundles throughout this terrain, and sheafs of wheat sprout upward in its wake. The trappings of recent civilization materialize; toy vehicles are handed to the diners and handed across the perimeter of the eating table-turned-landscape. Sobelle clambers onto the surroundings, sticks his hand in it and strikes oil; tall buildings begin popping up right here and there. We start to suspect there could also be somebody beneath the desk.

The viewers was bewildered, however charmed, and for 90 minutes decreased to a state of childlike marvel, reveling within the frisson of anticipation, awkwardness and unease. The immersive setup produced some amusing unscripted moments, like when a theatergoer’s cellphone acquired swept away as Sobelle eliminated the tablecloth; his demeanor as he handed it again was an image of dumb officiousness, each apologetic and vaguely affronted.

Sobelle’s comedy of affable idiocy could also be witless, however it is usually timeless — each bit as primal, one suspects, as our love of consuming. (There’s a cause “Mr. Bean” remains to be so widespread around the globe.) In drawing a lot of its mirth from sheer ridiculousness or grotesquerie, “Food” channels a comic book sensibility from much less exalted sectors of the leisure world — assume provincial circus troupes, or aggressive consuming championships.

In the comparatively rarefied environs of the Edinburgh International Festival, the present’s sensibility seems like an ironic curio. I used to be reminded of Freddie Mercury’s line about desirous to carry opera to the lots: Sobelle, it appears, is doing the inverse, bringing low tradition to the cosmopolitan elite. A perverse type of altruism, maybe.

Food
Through Aug. 27 at The Studio, in Edinburgh; eif.co.uk.