Review: It Would be Such a Shame if You Missed Out

Three actors arrive to perform a play. They find their stage dominated by an enormous, pulsing mirrored cube. Venue management, strapped for cash, has double-booked the space with PartyBox.com. The party was supposed to finish before curtain up. It hasn’t.

This is the absurdly funny starting point for Theater Artemis and Theatre Basel’s contribution to the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival. Billed as a comedy about finding the entrance to life’s great bash, the reality is a sharper, meta-theatrical dramedy. Superbly conceived by director Jetse Batelaan, it probes FOMO, the grim sacrifices required to fit in, and the distinct chill of feeling isolated in a crowded room. Batelaan holds no fear of anarchic rebellion; he finds both comedy and deep pathos in the human metaphor playing out on stage.

Working wonderfully well in English, Elias De Bruyne, Tim Van Dongen, and Claudia Kanne share an unhurried, natural chemistry. They battle Toben Piel’s relentless generic house bangers with varying degrees of hope and despair. A well-timed bass drop reliably destroys every earnest theatrical moment they attempt. It feels akin to Mischief Theatre’s disaster-comedies, spiked with the awkward pathos of an Alan Partridge set piece. Their dialogue has the harried naturalism of performers trying to make the best of an utter disaster – the laughs come thick and fast.

The Door Policy

However, beyond such deft humour, this production continuously displays a frank awareness of social dynamics. When Kanne innocently asks why De Bruyne and Van Dongen assume she will be granted entry to the cube before them, the boys turn on her, quipping ‘Don’t be so naive, Claudia’. When the cube finally admits her and Tim, they proceed, promising Ellias a swift return, only to immediately give way to the party inside. Both dialogue and physical humour are delivered with delicious comic timing, riding on a razor-sharp wave of observational humour. The unspoken rules of social survival are writ large across proceedings.

Billed as a comedy about finding the entrance to life’s great bash, the reality is a sharper, meta-theatrical dramedy. Superbly conceived by director Jetse Batelaan, it probes FOMO, the grim sacrifices required to fit in, and the distinct chill of feeling isolated in a crowded room.

Of course, Batelaan is a theatre-maker unafraid of anarchy, so the invitation to enter the cube extends to the audience; When a mysterious man emerges waving tickets, a stampede ensues.

Only a select few gain entry. Those left queuing must suffer alienation. The stage, in effect, goes to war with the audience, weaponising their own FOMO. Van Dongen surveys the rejected masses with a sneer. ‘Super nice that you’re interested in our show,’ he deadpans. It’s funny, but you can feel the misery dripping from his voice.

Once opened, the box immediately escalates its campaign of trolling towards our actors. Marloes van der Hoek and Wikke van Houwelingen’s stage design conceals the cube’s true nature until exactly the right moment. The mirrors flash translucent to reveal ravers inside, snapping back to silver the second the trio turns around. It is pure pantomime.

***It Would Be Such a Shame by Theater Artemis & Theater Basel Kurt © Van Der Elst0***

This absurdity finds the show’s central question morphing. Initially, the trio only wants to know how to stop the party. Soon, they are asking how to get inside. By the climax, their desperation flips: how do they get out?

Inside the Box

Eventually, all three surrender and step into the cube. Here, the comedy fractures. The crowd dons eerie masks. Euphoria splinters into a mix of forced, desperate dance and genuine joy. The party offers community, but offers no defence against loneliness. The party promises happiness, but when entered into under duress (peer pressure, or FOMO), it can set a stage for trauma. Batelaan cleverly bends the party until it becomes a purgatory for our heroes, sometimes reduced to disembodied, lost voices in the throng, at other times the lone body in an empty cube. You can have too much of a good thing, he seems to say, but was it so great to begin with?

The comedy fades but never dies; a long-promised ‘kissing scene’ is delivered with subversive glee, but not before an impromptu visit to a takeaway for some garlic-heavy munchies. When the party in the cube finishes, the erstwhile revellers we have watched cavort, vanish, and morph into increasingly disturbing visions of anonymous revelry simply empty out, nonchalant, past the incredulous threesome, and back to the stalls. For me, a late realisation that the trio had been reading us the story from their scripts from the beginning provided a different emotion: delighted surprise. There is a depth to the story and its social commentary that rewards careful attention.

Batelaan is smart enough not to force a happy-ever-after onto this story – too much has happened, too many of our heroes’ flaws have been flaunted, to allow it. That doesn’t mean there isn’t some degree of triumph, but if there is, then it’s to be found in the quiet, normality of a friendship that survived the party, and in learning that knowing how and when to leave is more important than finding the door ‘inside’. Maybe this subdued finale is somewhat muddled by a youthful audience alive with questions of what life was like in the cube, but for those still listening, it rings pretty true.

Featured Image: It Would Be Such a Shame by Theater Artemis & Theater Basel Kurt © Van Der Elst0