PPP: The Last Cabaret on Earth
★★★★☆ Impressive
Traverse: Tue 17 – Sat 21 Sept 2024
Review by Hugh Simpson
The Last Cabaret on Earth, by Brian James O’Sullivan at the Traverse, is the first in the new series of Play, Pie and a Pint from Òran Mór (with Ayr Gaiety) – and has an impact out of all proportion to its small scale.
The title definitely has echoes of Douglas Adams, and refers to a show that Sam (Marc Mackinnon) has been performing, with partner Mel, since it was announced the world was about to end a year before.
Marc Mackinnon in The Last Cabaret on Earth. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
Sam, like everyone else, didn’t believe the sun was really going to explode. But now it seems it will – an hour from now. And Sam is trapped without Mel, in the piano bar of a faceless airport hotel. With the audience representing the hotel’s residents, there seems little else for Sam to do other than perform that cabaret.
Despite the doom-laden nature of the situation, this is a surprisingly warm show, largely driven by music. A selection of medleys, standards and more left-field choices sees Rodgers & Hart and a hymn, numbers originally performed by Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, Carole King and Bill Withers and a song about a bungalow made from pasta.
Mackinnon’s voice is expressive and emotional, and just right for the space. He also has impeccable comic timing in the between-songs chatter, which fills in the character’s story with economy and considerable humour.
the lightest of touches
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is little concrete detail about the impending disaster. It seems certain to end unsatisfactorily one way or the other in dramatic terms, but O’Sullivan manages to overcome this pitfall with skill.
There is also a great deal to admire in the rest of the script; the obvious environmental message is all the more effective for being applied with the lightest of touches. The material about religion, difference, love, loss and the importance (or otherwise) of art is all also beautifully and deftly woven into the fabric of the piece.
Marc Mackinnon in The Last Cabaret on Earth. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
The result is utterly charming and really quite moving. This is aided greatly by Joe Douglas’s assured direction and the wonderfully inventive design of Zephyr Liddell. Everyday items are pressed into service as theatrical props, while the staging is more expansive and magnetic than any one-hander has a right to expect.
Ross Kirkland’s lighting and Ross Nurney’s sound design, meanwhile, are excellent, evoking the impending apocalypse without going over the top.
All of this results in a spectacle more imaginative and absorbing than most productions with ten times the resources. In particular, the rendition of Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, making use only of piano, voice, one spotlight, a broken glitterball, a mobile phone and a mop, is as entrancing a piece of theatre as anything you’ll see this year.
This homespun, low-key appeal is characteristic of a show that – despite the galactic nature of its premise – is an intimate and warm reminder of the things that make life worth living.
Running time: 55 minutes (no interval)
Traverse Theatre, 10 Cambridge St, EH1 2ED
Tuesday 17 – Saturday 21 September 2024
Daily at 1.00 pm
Details and tickets: Book here.
ENDS
