CRETE AND BARREL
Ikea, welcome to chintz heaven - where your weekend goes when it dies.
Think you're gladiator enough to survive the Ikea Challenge? You’ll need a map to guide you through the maze of home improvements - and frequent lingonberry refills just to keep your strength going for that extra mile.
But for some, it’s more than adding that natural touch to your lounge with a set of cherrywood nesting tables. For young couples like Sam and Jackie, navigating the twists and turns of modern decoration's a sacred rite of passage for Life itself.
Sam and Jackie aren’t rushing into anything. Buying furniture is a lot like dating on Craig’s List: choose wrong and you’ll find yourself forcing some dirty secret into a trunk and dumping it in a lake in the dead of night.
But as closing time looms, Sam and Jackie's lack of compromise is starting to look like a worrying indictment of their love life.
Fortunately for them, furniture assistant Derek happens to be locking up tonight, and good ol’ Derek offers to let them stick around a little longer.
Now, it could be that Derek is of the old school - happy to go that extra mile to ensure customer satisfaction…
Or it could be that time of year when Ikea sacrifices a happy couple to appease the Minotaur.
When one's looking for the perfect bookcase to complement one's bedroom set - the rules seem to be: anything goes.
DEREK (O.S.)
Yeah... it’s not something we put in the commercials. But thank you for shopping at IKEA.
It turns out Derek’s a company man after all.
Soon, the doors lock and the lights dim.
Unfortunate Sam and Jackie find themselves stalked through a labyrinth of home furnishings by a meat craving, half-man, half-bull.
With their escape plans falling apart faster than medium-density fibreboard, the two must work together to escape before they go the same way as the meatball lunch platter.
Want to know what really happened last night in Sweden? Read the whole script right here.
A wry swipe at modern relationships and furniture shopping with a classical Greek twist, Mike Revenaugh’s comic-horror Crete and Barrel quickly delivers the goods before throwing away the instructions and getting stuck into some fast paced comic-horror. It’s played for laughs and you’re guaranteed to get some. Will Jackie and Sam outsmart the Minotaur and escape from Ikea with their relationship intact? Keep your fingers - um, "hooves" - crossed!