“I’m terribly sorry. I’m running late. I have to have a shower and there’s no hot water.” When David Danzon, Corpus artistic director, greets you at the door of his house at 8 Baden Street in bathrobe and slippers you know something’s up; you’re just not quite sure what. House Guests is an adventure, a performance in the form of a house party in which the guests/audience can wander at will over three floors and a basement, to follow the antics, games and yes, dance moves, of a motley crew of performers.

“There’s only one house rule,” says Danzon, passing around pairs of slippers and offering refreshments. Guests – up to 20 at a time – are served green tea or vodka. Then stage lights come on around the archway separating living room and dining room, the red curtain is parted and there stand five characters dressed identically in white cotton, hooded robes. As they move about we detect chatter from sound devices in their pockets, along the lines of “Oh what’s that?” ; “very nice.”

A French song comes on from some hidden source, a couple starts swaying to the music,  and the wandering begins. Dancer Michael Caldwell does drag, donning glasses and a black wig. He simpers about, lip-synching on a table top to  Barbra Streiusand’s “The Way We Were.” Actor, dancer and comedian Rob Feetham is hooded for much of the evening, but comes alive as a boxer with a topknot and challenges guests to a match with a pair of mechanical boxers. Indrit Kasapi, actor, director, writer and choreographer, is a silent fellow who, with a change from Arab headdress to bowler hat and bow-tie is transformed into an authoritarian lurker. Japanese dancer Takako Segawa puts on a Japanese wig and kimono and invites guests to play a kind of shell game in which the guest inevitably loses. Later in a child’s bedroom, she does a tea ceremony with a little girl’s toy kitchen set. Dancer Jolyane Langlois dons a blue wig and in a back bedroom offers to paint fingernails dark blue.

You’re never quite sure what to expect, especially as the performers have a knack for disappearing into closets or behind shower curtains and then cropping up again on a different floor. It all seems entirely daft and random, although there is a point when we are all drawn together to watch Langlois and Segawa do a smart duet over chairs and tables.

House Guests goes from weird to weirder – a figure in a long black dress and black net gloves arrives under a tall lampshade that lights up. Later we are herded into the kitchen for a soup supper. You notice a well-read copy of Baudelaire’s Fleurs de mal on a corner table. The Joris-Karl Huysmans-esque lampshade character was also a clue to the inspiration for this site-specific show: it’s part parlor game, part theatre of the absurd, all very decadent and delightful. Each house guest is likely to get a unique experience, depending on whom they follow and which floors they settle on. All the personal effects of this family are on display such that House Guests also has its voyeuristic element. At evening’s end, guests are invited to stay and chat and possibly venture an idea about what they’ve just witnessed.

House Guests

Created by David Danzon, Rob Feetham, Michael Caldwell, Indrit Kasapi, Jolyane Langlois and Takako Segawa.

Music by Pedro Guirao

Lighting by Claire Hill

Costumes by Carolin Linden

A production of Corpus at 8 Baden Street, Toronto until December 17

Photo of Rob Feetham by Jae Yang