Oslo-based troupe Susie Wang’s third instalment in a trilogy of “human nature” is an ambitious and audaciously executed work of absurdism that I still can’t decide whether to recommend or not. But its stagecraft, physicality and aspects of emotional provocation have not left my memory for days now and, as such, it is indisputably haunting.
Like a fever dream, the performance vacillates from the logical and literal to the disturbingly fantastical. Indeed, author and director Trine Falch has captured the kind of subconscious asides one has with oneself in REM sleep with uncanny accuracy and then plunges us into a hyper-dramatic pseudo-southern-gothic realm. Refreshingly, Falch doesn’t seek to break the fourth wall in her absurdism but rather doubles down on a distortion of genre expectations. The production values are stupendous — the set, by Bo Krister Wallstrøm, is an artistic installation in its own right — and yet there is a decidedly campy B-movie trashiness to aspects of the production. The Norwegian speakers’ southern drawls are slowed to a mockery that gives the effect of watching a film with the frame rate reduced.
Indeed, it is the pacing that has had my critical judgement on the horns of indecision for the better part of a week. Is the molasses-like pace an act of genius — flowing languidly like so much mundane evil, even if we grasp a sinister and disquieting story from inception? Or does it labour and drag what could be a more exhilarating theatrical experience? The choice to render all the characters — Beatty (Julie Solberg), the devoted hotel receptionist-cum-masseuse-cum-nurse-cum-heroic-vampire-slayer, and Violet (Mona Solhaug), the nursing-mother and man-child-enabler, and Danny (Kim Atle Hansen), the mysterious guest on a “special diet” with an aluminium attaché case handcuffed to his wrist — in a sort of malaffect slow-motion adds to the surrealism and disorientation of the world, but by its very nature, is monotonous. Perhaps that’s the point and thus when the work’s extreme Grand Guignol spatter horror arrives, it punctuates the deliberate mundanity of the previous world of brutal moral indifference built by two strangers meeting in a hotel lobby: one who has lost her luggage (but clearly not her baggage) the other literally chained to it.
Without question, the physicality of the performances is world class and Burnt Toast is worth catching to remind yourself of just what can be achieved on stage with brilliant design and training and yet few lighting effects. This production certainly leaves the Almedia’s current production of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros in the dust: it has the confidence to ignore meta-theatrical tricks, video installations, or on-the-nose socio-political parallels. It treats its audience as adults and lets them decide what they’re seeing and what it might mean. Burnt Toast both spells out certain points with precision and then jettisons them with so much realistic disdain whilst taking us to a totally insane world that might be the inside of a womb or hell or generations of human sacrifice and barbarism or just a high design-concept hotel — all with a dash of Sam Shepherd pastiche and Angela Carter-esque dark and angry fairy tales.
I have a feeling that, come December, when I recall the top 10 productions I’ve seen this year, Burnt Toast will surface in my memory (if it ever fades). This production is mad, daring and will linger in your mind — just on the cusp of a nightmare and an extended gag.
Review by Mary Beer
Blending in-your-face body horror with an unsettling manipulation of the mundane, in Burnt Toast Susie Wang create an “uncanny gap between the real and the unreal, the original and the fake.”
Set designer Bo Krister Wallström’s garish and intricate staging transports audiences to somewhere in the Deep South, in an all-red hotel lobby with a front desk and two elevators — one going up and one going down. Betty, the receptionist, dutifully minds her desk as Danny arrives, chained to a mysterious silver briefcase. His attention soon turns to Violet—a woman sipping an eggnog cocktail while cradling her daughter. Could her child be his?
As their conversation deepens, questions spiral and danger unfolds, blending love and horror in a bloody descent into the unknown.
Betty Julie Solberg
Danny Kim Atle Hansen
Violet Mona Solhaug
Script and Direction Trine Falch
Scenography Bo Krister Wallstrøm
Music and Sound Design Martin Langlie
Lighting Design Phillip Isaksen
SFX Fanney Antonsdottir
Stagecraft Design Antti Bjørn, Jon Løvøen
Stagecraft Live Simen Ulvestad, Oscar Solløs, Viola Hamre
Dialect Coach Sarah Valentine
BURNT TOAST
Battersea Arts Centre
22 and 23 April 2025
