The 12 drummers, sitting upstage in a three-tier urn-shaped frame, are virtuosos in tight sound formation, writes Janet McAllister.
Two cooks, high drama and hypnotic rhythms - yet this illustrated drumming show from Kerala in South India is emphatically not some relaxed mix of My Kitchen Rules and Stomp!. The sacred, urn-shaped Mizhav drums do not invite a passive audience; instead we're to tease out metaphors for life and
marriage while also surrendering to the sensory experience of this wordless slow burn (or rather, this literally delicious caramelisation).
The show's director and writer, Roysten Abel, is interested in "contemporary folk performance" - using traditional artforms to create contemporary artworks - and he succeeds. The immaculately lit show combines different energies - culinary, sacred, musical and romantic - into one. Cook, play, swoon.
When the lights go up, we see a handsome pair of figures seated behind two cooking pots, with ramrod-straight backs and stern faces. The intense silence confirms their status as "unhappy couple". The first sounds we hear are the electronic beeps of the hot plate controls (the show's only joke).
In a Salman Rushdie novel, the couple's cooking would be curdled by their sour resentment, despairing weariness or cold anger. At one point, they try to pour milk out of empty bowls; the couple themselves are spent, with nothing left to give.
But, as they ladle the ghee, sugar and cardamom, and the steam rises, the smells are only delectable.
