★★☆☆☆
Metaphor alert! According to the programme notes of this impressive but interminable new show from the physical theatre company Gecko, its deviser and director Amit Lahav was inspired by the idea of the wedding as an emblem of the “many contracts of modern life”. So there are literal wedding rituals here, as men and women from this gifted cast climb into wedding dresses, sing and dance, clap and holler. Yet elsewhere that metaphor proves too broad to bind intense but opaque routines about business and immigration, growing up and moving away, oppression and revolt.
Individual moments grab the attention. The finale, in which everyone comes to the front of the stage to sing, clap and stomp, is thrilling. The Wedding is conveying ideas that are close to the hearts of its creators, but too often they are keeping the meaning of them close to their chests.
It starts with people coming down a slide on to a pile of teddy bears, seemingly being inducted into adulthood. One of them, Sophie, will later challenge the system represented by men whose features are smoothed over by face stockings (nice effect) and are standing high in a two-storey arch upstage. These brides head into a world of offices, dances, automation and alienation. I think. Meanwhile, through a suitcase at the side of the stage, the immigrant characters Khalid and Lola arrive to do some clowning to try to earn approval and money from the audience.
One of the most effective routines has Khalid and Lola running from pursuers, and for once we get what’s going on: they are refugees on the margins of society. And of course there must be room for mystery and allusion for us to join the dots for ourselves and not necessarily straight away.
Yet despite the striking designs of Rhys Jarman — love those chairs topped with old lampshades and veils — given shadowy allure by Joe Hornsby’s lighting, and despite Dave Price’s varied, vital soundtrack with traces of jazz and Middle Eastern music, too much is befuddling. The metaphor of the contracts of modern life is too loose to sustain so much high emotion and heightened physicality, wholeheartedly performed and stylishly staged though it is. I wanted to be going, “Wow.” More often I was going, “Whuh?”
Touring to March 9. geckotheatre.com