You mean we don’t get to sit down? You do, eventually. But the first third of the show takes place at three other locations at the alternative arts center (which by the way is a great place for this type of work.)

The audience eases into the work by gathering in a gallery space where theatergoers are offered a glass of wine and are addressed by a husband-and-wife team of chocolatiers, one dressed in a cocoa-licious dress (Laura Crow and Sachiko Komura did the yummy costumes). The duo talks to the audience about the glory of chocolate and their special, socially-conscious methods where the beans are lovingly gathered, shipped and processed before it becomes part of their special secret recipe. This segment ends with the passing around of chocolate-drizzled profiteroles (courtesy of MAX Downtown).

There’s snacks? Well, a profiterole or two. Or three, if you’re lucky — and greedy.

Then what? The audience is guided to a second space where it encounters a woman dressed in a gold-foil, candy-wrapper dress who is having a kind of double boiler melt-down. (You get to know more about her later.) Then the audience goes to another area where the husband and wife team are back, this time making a cookbook presentation. That’s where the narrative sort of begins.

Sort of? It’s hard to get a story-line going on the run, and when not everyone can catch every line of dialogue, even throwaways. But eventually the audience is taken to a more traditional performing space where seats are provided. That’s when the play proper, written by Chantal Bilodeau, along with the company, begins.

And what is the story? The chocolate-couple have an appetite for fame and fortune (and sex) and seek it out first with their own cookbook attempt, then with an audition for a television food network program. But the most likely avenue to their dreams is via a representative —  who uses them both — from a doughnut empire who wants the couple’s secret recipe for the company’s own mass-market master plan. Though the plot has more holes than the doughnuts, it doesn’t seem to slow down things, thanks to the playful and stylish staging by Helene Kvale, the company’s founding artistic director.

The show works best on its lightest, sometimes surreal levels (touches of Christopher Durang here). But when it tries to get serious, there’s little human connection. The socio-political-gustatory themes land clearly, but they don’t resonate.

And the themes are…? It’s about the profit of profiteroles (capitalism; worker exploitation; the selling of one’s “name” and “identity,” mass marketing). Making it all palatable is its humor, talk of food (a neglected subject in culture) and sex (not so neglected).

For the kids? Not for this adult Candyland. (There’s a bit of auto-eroticism in one scene) But also perhaps not for some traditional theatergoers. But for those looking for something different, playful and engagingly performed (David McCamish, Joni Weisfeld and Mara Lieberman, all of whom give delicious performances), it works pretty well and offers an off-beat and entertaining theater alternative.

Twitter review in 140 characters or less? A promising bow by a new theater company, but in the end Hunger is more of a tasty amuse bouche than a full meal.

Thoughts on leaving the parking lot? Bated Breath looks like it may have found its niche, just different enough from other theaters in town (Hartford Stage with its focus on classics and new plays; TheaterWorks with its latest New York hits restaged locally; and HartBeat Ensemble with its community-centric focus). This production has me curious about their next, always a good sign

Running time: One hour and 25 minutes. No intermission. And about 300-600 calories, I’d say.

Runs through: Oct. 2

The hollowness of life in America is at the heart of Hunger.  Bilodeau posits that, at one extreme, the lower classes gravitate toward the cheap and disposable as imposed by this nation’s wealthy one percent.  On the other hand, the cultured and wealthy elite congregate at stultifying cocktail parties and flock to boutiques to embrace hollow luxuries.  In other words, there are those that are satisfied with Hershey’s syrup and there are others who embrace fair trade, humanely-harvested, smoky note-infused, imported South American cocoa.  It is a fascinating, if simplistic, assessment and, at either end of the spectrum, we end up looking like assholes.   Maybe in a country with a disappearing middle class, this may seem accurate, but in my estimation there are a quantity of people who reside in the center – people who appreciate both a profiterole and a Dunkin’ Donut.

An unusual and exciting direction for Hartford, Hunger is staged as environmental and, sometimes, experimental theatre.  The audience becomes an active participant in the work as you move between four of Real Art Ways’ funky gallery spaces.  This, in and of itself, is a novelty for this town and a welcome dash of downtown New York in central Connecticut.  When experiences like the immersive Sleep No More go directly from Boston to New York barely stopping to honk and wave as they speed down I-95, it feels as if Hartford seldom gets to delight in this daring style of theatre.  Having Real Art Ways add theatre to its palette of art, music, film, lecture and performance art offerings further expands the institution’s range as a premier presenter of the cutting edge.  Hopefully, RAW and Bated Breath can continue and deepen their relationship.

The play centers around three characters – Charles deMarquet, the embodiment of artistic and sexual passion; his wife Christa, the frustrated moral center of the piece; and a woman at times known as Maxine and at others as Carol, an enigmatic predator.  The performers – David McCamish, Joni Weisfeld and Mara Lieberman – all go for the gusto with their performances and grapple with the each other as they come to terms with the art vs. commerce battle at the center of the piece.  The confusion of sex, food, money and emptiness is no mean feat to tackle and they rise to the challenge.

Beginning in the deMarquet’s chocolate shop/bakery, the audience is invited to mill about in a brightly lit art gallery-cum-kitchen.  Wine-fueled chatter halts with a sensual profiterole demonstration by Charles and Christa.  The audience is treated to a gooey profiterole dripping with chocolate; one eats with one’s fingers, highlighting the sexual nature of the experience.

We move into a darkened corridor where the mysterious Maxine delights in bashing chocolate wrappers into a wall and invites the audience to do the same.  As such, we are indulging in the superficial pleasures of the wrapping, not what lies within.  The audience then trundles a few more feet into a cocktail party at Goldova Chocolatiers – a mass-produced, high-end confection for the wealthy.  It is the most awkward stop on the audience’s journey thus far as the space is inadequate for the sequence or the dancing that we are encouraged to join.  The deMarquet’s are also out of place as Charles desperately wants to be a part of the scene and Christa desperately wants to leave.  Enter Maxine and exit the audience as we move to our fourth and final destination.

When we arrive a few feet away in the largest gallery space, we are invited to sit in a more traditional theatre atmosphere, a two-tiered playing space flanked by audience on risers on two sides.  Unfortunately in this location, Bilodeau and director Helene Kvale begin to struggle with the form of the piece:  does it want to be abstract like Maxine’s sequence in the hallway or does it want to be more of an erotic drama or a corporate farce like we have seen in the cocktail/dance sequence?  Hunger tries to have it all ways.  Some portions are highly stylized with choreographed movement (courtesy of Greg Webster).  Other portions are a more traditional dramatic portrait of marital conflict.  And yet other portions aspire to wacky farce, lampooning corporate America and artistic sellouts.  Once seated in the large gallery, the audience loses much of its role in the play as we sit idly, instead of actively, watching the portrait of the deMarquet’s marriage devolve into a lust triangle/ménage au chocolat.

The thing that makes immersive theatre like Sleep No More so beguiling is the complete submersion into the world of the play.  I am not sure Hunger knows what its world is yet as it is so busy commenting on facets of our world.  As this is a premiere, my hope is that Bated  Breath Theatre Company and Bilodeau continue to develop the piece to find the voice and the heart that lies at the knotty center of the play.  Drawing parallels between our national proclivity to crave empty calories while hungering for something more is worthwhile.  By decisively drawing her characters and honing the voice of the play, Bilodeau could have a keeper.

Bated Breath has not let Bilodeau down as the production elements are more than fine.  The women’s costumes literally drip chocolate and Charles’s costume features chocolate-colored accents.  Kudos to Laura Crow and Sachiko Komuro for the effective and intriguing costuming.  Mike Billings’ set is deceptively simple and serves the galleries well, minus setting the dance sequence in insufficient space.  The sound design by David Sanderson ricochets between cocktail music and electronic, only occasionally stumbling with some sound cue misfires at the performance I viewed.  The lighting design by Chad Lefebvre is a highlight with each space lit to maximum effect.

Despite my reservations about the play, Hunger is a commendable, complex and ambitious effort for a relative newcomer to the Hartford scene.  The production is something that a seasoned company would struggle to achieve after many years of work.  Here is hoping that Bated Breath becomes a mainstay of the community and continues to stretch the definition of theatre for a community bred on prosceniums and thrust spaces.  And here’s hoping they continue serving chocolate.

Director Helene Kvale started out with the intention of making a “piece to really look at who we are as Americans, to be about more than a love triangle, to have political intent, and still be really fun!” In keeping with the ever-evolving cream puffs that open and close each performance, she wanted a “rich, layered, complex” experience for the audience.

To that end, she assembled a creative team that brings a lot of cultures to the table. Kvale herself grew up partly in Norway, was educated in the U.S. and the U.K., and performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company before coming to UConn as an acting professor. Playwright Chantal Bilodeau is French-Canadian, studied film and playwriting in Ohio, is currently working on a trilogy about the Arctic that has her traveling quite a bit, and has significant credits as a translator for several African playwrights. Movement director Greg Webster is a former Golden Globes boxer who also studied LeCoq technique in France. The three actors in the piece are all local professionals who landed in Hartford after working in New York for some years; one hales from Kentucky, one from Ohio, and one from New Jersey.

After gathering intel by interviewing pastry chefs (including a high-end chocolatier in Norwalk who supplies Dean & Deluca with goodies) and researching fair trade and food as related specifically to slavery and chocolate, this group began meeting in December of 2010 to devise the play through a process of collaborative workshops. By no means were they all on the same page politically: one thinks going to Whole Foods is as close to heaven as we can get on this planet and another feels guilty the second she sets foot in the place. But all had experience with devising a method of creating new work that is mainstream in the U.K. but less common here. Playwright Bilodeau used videotapes of their workshops to collect material for the script, which was in final form by the beginning of August.

The resulting world premiere is meant for adults, with dashes of eroticism and bondage as two women pursue the same man, the same recipe, the almighty dollar, and the American dream in different ways. It’s a fair bet that nothing like it has been seen in Hartford, the Land of Steady Habits, at least not since Chick Austin’s legendary parties at the Atheneum back in the day.