KEY POINTS:
The 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's death gives Decadence at the Musgrove Studio a timely, even salacious, relevance.
Any other time it would be easy to question the relevance to a New Zealand audience of Steven Berkoff's wickedly funny polemic on the English class system.
But now, newspapers,
magazines and books are full of discussions of the class system, Diana's legacy and her effect on the most upper of upper classes, the royal family.
If our ongoing fascination with Diana proves anything it is that we love hearing about our betters behaving badly, a theme that Berkoff investigates to great comic effect in Decadence.
The play focuses on two couples at either end of the class system through a series of entertaining vignettes.
Steve and Helen are a posh pair who live for opera, hunting, gourmet excesses and their illicit affair. Meantime, Steve's new-money wife Sybil is stuck at home with her thoughts of revenge and her lower class lover Les, originally hired as a private detective.
Both couples are played by Jennifer Ward-Lealand and Michael Lawrence who give a master class in acting that makes for must-see theatre.
Their accents, physicality and characterisation are pretty much faultless; a joy for an audience to watch and an inspiration for wannabe actors.
Specific highlights include a sexy explanation of the thrill of a fox hunt and a guide to getting drunk.
While Decadence features plenty of laughs, Berkoff had a more serious intent in writing it. He sought to show the ruling classes at their worst, highlighting their lack of any real achievement, their pleasure from sado masochistic activity such as hunting, their infantilism and lack of emotional maturity.
The only trouble is he makes the posh life look like so much more fun than the dreary striving and hard graft of the middle and lower classes.
Yes, Helen and Steve are grotesque but they would make for far more amusing drinking partners than the bitter and boring Les and Sybil.
Decadence is not an easy, naturalistic sitcom-style play. It is a more theatrical experience that will be an acquired taste for many, thanks to Berkoff's use of mime and his rich language that combines Shakespearean flourishes and rhyming couplets with dirty street talk.
With such evocative language at his disposal and two fantastic actors to make it real, director Paul Gittins focuses on the performers and keeps the design flourishes to a minimum.
John Parker's set design of raised floor, ornate couch and chandelier is well balanced and works well, providing plenty of surfaces for the characters to abuse.
Andrew Malmo's lighting is fine in many scenes but the use of red light in the hunting scene seems cliched and at odds with the overriding theme of the monologue, which is more about sex than death.
Decadence may not have wide appeal, but it is a gourmet experience for the theatre connoisseur.
It's the theatrical equivalent of gorging on oysters, blood-red steak, garlic beans, wine poached pears, oozing stilton cheese, vintage champagne and dry martinis - so richly satisfying you almost feel queasy.
REVIEW
What: Decadence
Where: Musgrove Studio
When: Until July 21
Reviewer: Shannon Huse
