THE HANGOVER REPORT – Geoff Sobelle’s immersive FOOD is an absurdist, hallucinatory meditation on why we eat how we eat

Geoff Sobelle in “FOOD” at BAM Fisher (photo by Maria Baranova).

This weekend at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s flexible BAM Fisher space, I caught the final installment of Geoff Sobelle’s astonishing trilogy of works exploring seemingly mainstay notions in our lives. Following his memorable productions of The Object Lesson (2013) and HOME (2017), the acclaimed performance artist now brings us FOOD. If you haven’t already guessed, his latest work – one of the more anticipated offerings of BAM’s Next Wave Festival – centers around our relationship with eating.

Whimsical and ultimately profound, the work achieves its lofty goals by showing instead of prescribing. Although the show was originally Sobelle’s concept, FOOD also bears the markings of co-creator Steve Cuiffo (who is also responsible for the evening’s head-scratching illusions) and co-director Lee Sunday Evans. Together, they’ve created an inquisitive, hallucinatory experience that keeps audiences off-balance throughout, covertly shifting from casually intimate interactions to breathtakingly panoramic vistas. Set on a massive banquet table – ingeniously designed with surprises aplenty – where we are guests, the evening begins innocuously enough with the serving of dinner. As the show unfolds, surreal elements are increasingly introduced until Sobelle poetically explodes the dining experience (no spoilers here) to immerse us in a soulful, clear-eyed meditation on why we eat how we eat. If FOOD lacks the urgency of the previous installments of the auteur’s trilogy, it’s a mature piece of theater-making that’s in no rush to hit its marks (which it gently but assuredly does).

FOOD finds Sobelle in top form, showcasing his absolute mastery of the art of performance, seamlessly mrlding a number of theatrical traditions, including (but not limited to) physical theater, sleight-of-hand magic, absurdist theater, art installation, puppet theater, and immersive theater. Active participation has always been a part of Sobelle’s communally-driven shows (a feature that guarantees that no two performances are ever alike), and FOOD is no different. Like a skilled puppeteer, Sobelle stealthily manipulates audiences all the while unassumingly holding holds court. It’s a subtle tour-de-force performance that’s invariably one step ahead of us.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

FOOD
Off-Broadway, Performance
Brooklyn Academy of Music
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through November 18

Categories: Off-Broadway, Theater

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