Theatre review: Here Lies Love - If the shoe fits, try dancing

Colleen Davis is one of five singers backed by a five-piece band in the Silo Theatre production.

When singer Ria Hall urges the crowd at Here Lies Love, the new production from Silo Theatre, to take to the dancefloor, what exactly are we dancing for?

We're dancing for the joy of it, because we're lifted from our seats by the insistent disco groove. We're dancing, too, for the central character, Imelda Marcos, subject of a fairytale that spins together rags-to-riches and true love stories in one Disney-like bundle.

But we're also dancing for the Imelda Marcos whose riches were gained by siphoning billions from the treasury of the Philippines, the country where her love, Ferdinand, was strongman leader.

Silo's Here Lies Love, based on the 2010 album of the same name co-written by cerebral rocker David Byrne and DJ Norman 'Fatboy Slim' Cook, doesn't ask us to ignore that ambivalence, it just puts it out there, letting us reflect - or not.

In this shortened concert performance of the album, a five-piece band, led by music director Robin Kelly, backs five singers - Hall, Jennifer Ward-Lealand, Sarah Nessia, Colleen Davis and Villette.

Things start hesitantly until, three songs in, Ward-Lealand drags the production together by sheer force of personality and the musicians snap into focus. Guitarist Marika Hodgson and percussionist Antonio Karam, a blur of Latin motion, catch the eye but Jo Shum's bass does the heavy lifting, laying down an authentically funky throb.

Of the singers, Villette, in particular, is magnetic, bringing sass and shoulder pads to perfectly complement Daniel Williams' set, which has Q Theatre's stage reimagined as a discotheque. It's an appropriate backdrop, with disco acting as shorthand for excess, mirroring the way that Imelda Marcos and her thousands of shoes were also shorthand for excess.

The set has resonance with the Marcoses' New York residence, too, which was said to house an enormous mirror ball, like a personal Studio 54 but with added human rights abuses.

Whether audience members care that they're being fed political commentary on a four-beats-to-the-bar platter will depend on how willing they are to lose themselves in the songs. For me, the show's weakness is the same one that troubles the album: the music isn't very compelling, lacking both the wry nerdery of Byrne's most interesting work and Fatboy Slim's glow-sticks-aloft euphoria.

As political theatre, though, Here Lies Love works as a fable for our Trumpian times. We watch the extravagance from a safe distance and are entertained; we dance while Manila burns.

What: Here Lies Love
Where & when: Rangatira at Q Theatre, until Saturday, December 8
Reviewed by Richard Betts