I Do: immersive hotel wedding drama reprised at Malmaison hotels

Dante or Die’s site-specific show I Do is being reprised at a number of Malmaison hotels, including a London run presented as part of the Barbican’s Scene Change season. Created by Daphna Attias and Terry O’Donovan and first performed in 2013, the piece captures the final 10 minutes before a ceremony.

The audience is divided into groups and shuttled between six rooms in different orders to witness moments around the wedding of Georgie (Carla Langley) and Tunde (Dauda Ladejobi). The production stages familiar wedding-day tropes—bridesmaids dancing on a bed, furtive affairs and pre-ceremony nerves—but the review says it becomes increasingly moving, revealing anguish and insecurity.

Scenes include Georgie’s mother Helen (Johanne Murdock) confronting her unfaithful ex-husband David (Jonathan McGuinness), a same-sex encounter involving the best man Joe (Manish Gandhi), and a quiet, painful exchange between Georgie’s grandparents Gordon (Geof Atwell) and Eileen (Fiona Watson), in which Eileen dresses Gordon, who is unable to talk or move, perhaps as the result of a stroke; Helen tells him, “I miss you.” The reviewer highlights Chloë Moss’s economy in the writing, Jenny Hayton’s set that replicates hotel-wedding kitsch, and Attias’s direction that allows emotion to evolve through stillness and small gestures.

Key Topics

Culture, I Do, Dante Or Die, Malmaison, Barbican, Daphna Attias