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Friday 22 June 2012

Porn.Cake by Vanessa Bates - Review

Porn.Cake is currently play at the SBW Stables Theatre. It is a contemporary work by Vanessa Bates which premiered in Melbourne last year.
It is based around two couples, Ant and Annie and Bill and Bella, and cake. Both couples are middle aged and the play explores the misgivings and feelings you might have when you reach that time in your life. It is a little like a reunion, reminiscing over lost dreams.  We also hear how times have changed and how modern technology, namely the mobile phone, can interfere with married relationships if you let it.  The couples tell the story while eating large amounts of cake, which also leads to more discussions around modern living and food allergies. One of the funnier scenes was with Ben, he doesn't like olives and talked about when you don't like a food, everybody seems to make it their mission to make you like it, this is so true.
The staging and production was very good. Between each scene audio snippets were played from Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Gordan Ramsey and I am sure there were more. The strobe lighting scene was also effective and it wouldn't have been easy for the actors either.  The bringing on and off the cakes and making sure that stage was fairly clear was quite a feat and acting while eating so much cake would not have been easy, I was surprised that nobody choked.
The dialogue is very circular, in that the first couples scene and the second couples scene were almost identical with the dialogue repeated in most scenes after. This was the most bizarre part of the play and in some parts it seemed very surreal. I did think that it was all going to come together and we were going to find that all the odd dialogue was going to join together to make sense, but it didn't.
This production will make you laugh and you will probably wonder what the heck? You will either think is it great or a total waste of perfectly good cake. One thing I can guarantee you will be hungry for cake when you leave. However, I don't think the actors will be eating cake,  for several months after the close of Porn.Cake!

Click here from more information on Porn.Cake

Photo: Georgina Symes

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