‘The devil is in the retail’ proclaims Pam, the strident floor manager in charge of this alternative Christmas experience brought to you by cabaret favourites Duckie. If only Duckie had done the detail as well.
This flamboyant promenade through an Ikea-style warehouse looks like it’s going to be a fun spoof on our midwinter spendfest. Flatpacks are piled high (but subversive labels reveal they are just piles of ‘Morkråpp’). Floor arrows direct you in to a series of anti-grottoes: each houses an oddly costumed character with fake hair, but never the promised free gift.
In a subversive live montage of crap consumerism, you get photographed with a ropey pop star, bamboozled by an improbably youthful shopping channel king and sit in the lap of the recycling Kangaroo. But I’ve had more fun than this at Christmas in Brent Cross Ikea.
Consumerism is crap but it gives us hit after hit of pleasure. Despite its witty promenade set and big grand finale, ‘Copyright Christmas’, is a bewildering and frequently dull experience: the patchiness of the vignettes is impossible to ignore in such close proximity and there’s not much in the way of storyline to wrap them up into a meaningful package. Overrunning its 80 minutes, it is as self-indulgent and ultimately indigestible as the festival it is so cynical about.