An emotive, honest insight into the chaos before “I do”.
Dante or Die’s I Do, revived as part of the company’s 20th anniversary season and presented in partnership with the Barbican, is an immersive theatre experience that places audiences directly inside the emotional pressure cooker of a wedding day. Staged across six hotel rooms in the Malmaison near Farringdon, the production unfolds in the fraught 15 minutes before Georgina and Tunde’s ceremony is due to begin. From the moment you enter, there is a palpable sense of suspended time: a corridor thick with anticipation, urgency and nerves as audience members are quietly shuffled from door to door.
Each room reveals a different fragment of the wedding party’s inner lives. Parents, children, partners and friends are caught in moments of doubt, resentment, love and longing, their stories overlapping as the clock ticks relentlessly towards the ceremony. Writer Chloë Moss’s script is unflinchingly honest about everyday relationships, and creators Daphna Attias and Terry O’Donovan have transformed a familiar, almost banal life event into something intimate and deeply engaging. Direction by Attias is particularly assured, allowing scenes to play with emotional clarity while making imaginative use of the hotel rooms themselves. The staging, led by meticulous stage management, ensures each space feels lived-in and specific, rich with detail that quietly extends the storytelling.
That attention to detail is, paradoxically, also one of the show’s frustrations. With around a dozen audience members packed into each room, scenes can feel cramped, and the rapid movement between spaces leaves little time to absorb the carefully placed props and environmental storytelling. A few extra minutes either side of scenes, or slightly smaller audience groups, would allow the immersive world to breathe and be fully taken in. On the night attended, the performance also ran almost half an hour over its advertised running time, but I imagine this will be addressed as the company finds its feet in its new home.
Performances across the cast are strong, with Manish Gandhi’s Joe standing out for his emotional precision and restraint. Fred Fergus’s Nick is compelling, though occasionally feels like a character who could benefit from greater depth. One of the most affecting scenes belongs to Geof Atwell and Fiona Watson as Gordon and Eileen, whose portrayal of a declining grandfather and his partner is so raw that it visibly moved an audience member to tears. These moments are often confronting and isolating – there is no distance here, no way to escape – and every other audience member’s breath, glance and reaction shapes your own experience of the story.
The Cleaner, played on this occasion by Terry O’Donovan, functions as a connective thread between scenes. While the role is conceptually effective, his repeated presence in the already crowded corridor sometimes denies the audience a moment of quiet reflection between emotionally heavy encounters. A brief pause to reset might heighten, rather than diffuse, the impact of the next scene that follows.
Ultimately, I Do is a fascinating study of ordinariness: a deeply human exploration of marriage, family and the expectations we place on one another. It gently but persistently asks what marriage means – and doesn’t mean – to its characters and, by extension, to the audience themselves. Despite minor logistical issues, this revival remains a novel, affecting and worthwhile experience, offering immersive theatre at its most intimate and emotionally resonant.
This show runs at Malmaison until 8th February before embarking on a short tour. Programme here.