Party Skills for the End of the World review a wild night out without leaving the sofa – The Guardian

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wo months into lockdown, it is an exciting prospect to be sent an invitation to a Zoom meeting with a dress code of party wear, along with instructions to drape festive lights across the screen. As a result, the gallery view of this interactive theatre show starts off looking like a virtual hen party, with participants bopping to Gloria Gaynors Its Raining Men in glittery tops, feather boas and elaborate headdresses. Everyone, it seems, is delighted to find an occasion to be out in their glad rags.

There is a level of intrigue, too, given that the organisers have also asked us to collect together a long list of household materials, which range from tinned fruit for cocktails to less explicable items such as pliers, padlocks and gaffer tape. What kind of virtual party is this, exactly?

A fun, feelgood one, it turns out one that captures the spirit of a night out. Party Skills for the End of the World was originally commissioned for the Manchester international festival in 2017 as a site-specific performance in a building in Salford. This version, which is part of an online series created by MIF to keep theatre alive during lockdown, squeezes itself into the 2D realm of the screen.

Like the cocktails, which are made from the remains of our store cupboards (mine is a mocktail of ginger ale and mashed banana, very tasty) the hedonism has a blitz spirit, make do quality to it.

Our hosts, Nigel Barrett and Louise Mari, who are from the theatre collective Shunt, encourage us to drink up, and later to gulp down shots. There are resident DJs who blast out synthesiser music, and we drink and dance together while intermittently convening in break-out rooms to be taught skills that might help us to live and to party after an imagined Armageddon.

Most of these are tongue-in-cheek, with one lesson in self-defence teaching us how to turn keys and pens into weapons against an assailant. Others feel like a craft-making session from Blue Peter, with demos on how to make party poppers from a balloon and an empty toilet roll, or paper flowers (newspaper, Sellotape and an elastic band).

Barrett and Mari offer philosophical snippets about life and death in the interludes between the organised revels. We are told to close our eyes and imagine ourselves together. They advise us on how to stop recurring nightmares, and leave dark thoughts to hover in the air: What do we fear? That we will be forgotten? That we knew it was not what we wanted to do but we never had the courage to change? We will all die. What sort of world will we build? These sober reflections come unexpectedly and have the potential to go deeper, but the scenario switches too soon and suddenly.

The show seems to deliberately work against building a cohesive narrative and veers away from becoming too serious. It is a picknmix bag of fun and frolics. There is a long dance at the end, which has the feel of a silent disco we are a collective body yet still in our own isolated worlds. There is a welcome relief in coming together this way, though the virtual hedonism, for all its fun, has a melancholy side too.

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Party Skills for the End of the World review a wild night out without leaving the sofa - The Guardian