Theatre / Meteor Shower, written by Steve Martin, directed by Chris Baldock, Belconnen Arts Centre, until July 5. Reviewed by LEN POWER.

How do meteors, homosexuality, the subconscious and eggplants come together with profound meaning in Steve Martin’s absurdist comedy?

While a meteor shower rages overhead, Corky and Norm host a dinner party for another couple, Gerald and Laura, at their home in the valley outside Los Angeles. 

The evening starts normally enough, but soon there is a suspicion that Gerald and Laura are not what they appear to be. Aggressively sexual and argumentative, their behaviour triggers an evening of increasing insanity.

In a stylish but normal household setting, director Chris Baldock and his cast of four unleash a frenzied experience that confounds and intrigues while it entertains. 

Martin’s incisive sense of humour takes the niceties of human social behaviour and turns them upside down in this very funny play.

Jess Beange as Corky and Sachin Nayak as Norm are the unsuspecting couple hosting the dinner party. Playing a normal, unexceptional couple at the beginning, they are put through an extraordinary emotional and behavioural experience in which the speed of their dialogue delivery and comic timing is very impressive.

As the strange couple invited to the dinner party, Maxine Eayr (as Laura) and Anto Hermida (Gerald) play their colourful and intimidating characters with confidence, energy and skill, utilising their body language particularly well.

Presented cinematically in short scenes, where time and reality collide, there are echoes of Alan Resnais’ film, Last Year at Marienbad, Luis Bunuel’s The Exterminating Angel and even Edward Albee’s play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Meteor Shower takes a wild and hilarious roller coaster ride through human emotions and behaviours with one of the cleverest endings ever!