Erin Harrington reviews The Feast, directed by Fleur de Thier and Renee Ryan and created with the cast, at Lyttelton Arts Factory, Friday 6 February, 2026.
The return season of Fleur de Thier and Renee Ryan’s stunning 75-minute performance work The Feast is set at a long black banquet table, which is backed by a truly impressive floral arrangement and surrounded by musical and percussion instruments. A woman, Mother (Mary Davison), sits, unsure if the person she sees is her adult daughter, or herself, or something else. Daughter (Aleasha Seaward) looks back, aware that something is shifting.
The poignant relationship between the pair plays out as a conversation in gesture and movement, each beat prompted by a different course of a sumptuous meal. Mother tells stories, berates her daughter, gets lost in tangents, loses track of time. We follow her through overseas trips and childhood adventures, each memory tied to a different coat that she pulls on and eventually discards, adding to a pile in one corner – a great comedic touch as well as a moving metaphor. The Feast moves slowly at first but earns its run time, working towards a climax that prompts an audible gasp from the audience.
Davison is absolutely magnetic as Mother. She’s variously flamboyant and funny, soft and vulnerable, occasionally obnoxious, always charismatic. You love her, but you also want to shake her. It’s a really impressive and focused performance.
Seaward, as Daughter, is a careful foil. Unlike Mother, who regales us with memories and occasionally goes into childlike digressions (and childlike behaviour), she has no dialogue – bar one single, lead-heavy word. Her attention, love, frustration, and fear are expressed at first through small gestures. Later, she explores the full width of the stage with increasingly frenetic dance sequences full of sweeping limbs and tight, twisted motions. In one of the work’s most vivid images, she fights against the constricted space beneath the long table as Mother sits on top, lost dreamily in the memory of a childhood tea party. It’s an affecting exploration of connection and separation, but also what it means for an adult child to come to parent their parent.
I also appreciate the work of Dayle Hunter, as a Waiter who moves us between scenes, facilitating each ‘meal’. It’s a neat way of incorporating stage management and a bit more humour, while providing another set of compassionate eyes on the relationship.
Musicians Cathy Irons (on violin and keyboard) and Cam Smillie (on a range of percussion instruments, from marimba and drums to the spoons) are on stage throughout as both participants and witnesses. The music and sound design, which incorporates loops and live recorded elements, is inspired – a fully integrated part of the work. Shifts in tone and rhythm pull us in and out of Mother’s recollections, discordant or off-kilter syncopation sometimes breaking through melodic lines or playful pizzicato strings. It’s warm, often funny, at times melancholy. In one small, beautiful moment, in an evening of such moments, Smillie pulls right back from a sequence that had opened with the propulsive drums from the swing hit “Sing, Sing, Sing”. Eventually, we are left with soft brushes swirling – the sound of an LP that’s hit the end of its tracks.
Mike Friend’s expressive lighting design pulls us in and out of Mother’s reality and subjective sense of self, while also expressing Daughter’s rising distress. It colourful and very well conceptualised, guiding the audience carefully towards the work’s conclusion.
By the end I feel both uplifted and absolutely gutted; my friend says it’s one of the best things she’s seen here. The Feast is a really beautiful, intimate and purposeful work that’s infused with a sense of compassion and care. It is a perfect evocation of how the arts and storytelling can grapple with big, difficult things. It’s also highly recommended – just take your tissues.
The Feast runs until Sunday 8 February, 2026.
Flat City Field Notes 