Stockholm Resource Pack - Frantic Assembly

The set:
Stockholm has several domestic settings. These areas
were suggested through the development sessions at the
National Studio. Each area has a naturalistic logic to it
but also has the potential to suggest the battlegrounds
that can exist in relationships. The kitchen and the bed
seemed particularly potent. Other areas, especially the
attic space suggested by the computer equipment and
gadgets, seemed places of escape or momentary isolation.
The late reference to the unfinished cellar points to the
stuff they are suppressing. It is this unfinished area that
‘Us’ suggests will betray their ultimate destruction
(see ‘Us)’.
The kitchen
Why a kitchen Because it is said that the kitchen is the
heart of the home. People tend to gravitate to it.
A kitchen is also a highly charged arena. It is a place of
creation and of tension. It is hot. It is where the alcohol is.
It has boiling water. It has flames. It has knives. It has
unforgiving, hard, sharp edges.
It is the perfect arena to play around with a story that has
the potential to flip from romance to violence. The room
itself suggests blood and the carving of meat, the
processing and disposal of flesh.
Yet this is where this modern couple choose to present
themselves. Because they are brilliant in this space. They
put away the shopping with a flourish, they entertain,
they cook ambitious meals. They set out to have the
perfect birthday meal yet are surrounded by the tools of
destruction. This, to us, was a delicious tension.
We were fascinated about how the kitchen could so
quickly and easily transform from a place of creation to a
place of destruction. In one of our development sessions
we played around with an Anthony Warrell Thompson
recipe for meat. We presented a performer talking to an
unidentified person. Using a recipe for leg of lamb with
apricots we asked her to change the details so that
everything was in the past tense. Every instruction was
something she had done, e.g.
'I sliced the tendons... revealing the softer, darker flesh.
I removed the flesh from the shin. I sliced a small onion
and browned the meat for about 5 minutes'
Far from sounding like Delia Smith, her steady,
impassionate, flat tones, directed towards the mystery
figure became a thoroughly chilling confession of murder.
It was clear she had methodically disposed of a body.
And here she was, spilling all to a policeman.
Georgina Lamb and Samuel James
Photo Manuel Harlan
18