24 December 2006
A class act in three sittings
Susannah Clapp: The ObserverIt's like a duchess farting in public. Each Christmas the Barbican
lets slip from under its well upholstered skirts a camp cabaret from
the disconcerting company called Duckie. They've previously brought
burlesque to a glitter-covered Pit; this year, the subject is social
class, with dinner thrown in.When you buy your ticket to Duckie: The Class Club,
you choose your status (and are invited to dress accordingly). You pay
£40 if you sign up for upper class, where you get champagne and
canapes, poker-faced waiters (who stretch the napkins out as if they're
about to garrotte you), a dropped-tray disaster and high-grade operatic
warbling. If you go for lower - where there were baseball caps and
towering heels (and one diner in full maid rig-out, wielding a feather
duster), you shell out £14.99 and have prawn cocktails and a carvery;
'Santa Baby' is played very loudly, and a small but talented white
rapper walks down the middle of the table. And if you opt for middle
class (£25) you get - well, pissed off. In what seems to be planned as
revenge on the theatre-going bourgeoisie, middle is the quietest area
of the room: they get gastro-pub cuisine (with the thing you really
want wiped off the blackboard), a course in anger management, some
contemporary dance and not much action. You're made to feel dull. This is the theatrical equivalent of conceptual art: the idea counts
more than what's done with it. Unfairness is part of the point: it's a
demonstration of stereotypes - and of that pervasive feeling that the
real party is happening round the corner. Until the curtains are
finally swept back, the three classes, invisible to each other, are
taunted by the noise from next door. But for one moment a window opens
in the upper class area and shows the toffs the proles in paper hats,
peering in. |
