Rene Köster’s Home Alone @ HUNGR

The final show of my 2025 Tallinn Fringe schedule was the only one I attended at HUNGR this year: Rene Köster’s solo performance Home Alone. Combining dance, theatre, pop culture and creative non-fiction, the show focuses on Kevin McAllister of the original film, and what’s become of him in the 35 years since his fateful Christmas. I’ll admit, as much as I’ve enjoyed keeping an eye on what McCulkin clan has gotten up to in the interim, I’ve spared little thought for the man that child must have become. A solid hint of this interpretation’s angle? Entry comes via a “Family ticket (valid for one person)”. Prepared with the support of the Estonian Cultural Endowment and HUNGR, House of Pedestrian’s Köster and team have pulled together an incredible staging for the series of scenarios, an imaginative, demonic take on parental abandonment and filial devotion.

On entering HUNGR this evening, the room is set up with chairs and sofas all facing center, creating a narrow aisle lengthwise down the space that stretches from the bar, the words CALM DOWN hung against a back drop in the style of a talkshow title; across a “stage” strewn with empty pizza boxes, a decorated Christmas tree at their centre; to the far end, with a big screen with one scene from Home Alone projected onto it: the moment at the end when Kevin’s mother returns home and apologises. Staged as though watching the film are two chairs and a small table, the latter with a bowl of candy on top, and one of the former occupied by the long-haired skeletal remains of, as we soon learn, Mother.

In the meantime, however, a corner of the bar is still open for business as people filter into the foggy but well-lit room, periodic “Please hold” warnings issuing from the speakers. The decor is Christmas with Satan, family paintings done in blood and unholy wreaths. We are given programs on entry, double-sided English and Estonian, as the show itself is, split across multiple acts bridged by audiovisual diary interludes from the performer’s youth. 

As the crowd settles and show begins, Köster’s entrance is marvelous and demented, slapstick throwbacks to the film and the glittery darkness of the present. A tablet, worn as a bit of clownish costume, is used to control sound, lights, “spoken” English, and a laugh track that is probably the best deployed gag I’ve seen in a while – particularly with the twisted sitcom appeal of the show. The episodes move one through another, blending drag and burlesque, video and puppetry, satanic ritual and podcast cattiness to illuminate the peculiar kind of humiliation only family can evoke. 

Whether a solemn, silent crossing of the booby-trapped floor or gory possession and reformation of the self, this was an incredible deployment of lights, sound, and movement to define the inner world of this Kevin: when we walk monstrous paths, we often fall into our own traps. An incredibly layered, fascinating examination that sits with you long after – as one tongue-in-cheek attendee commented to me at the end, “As an analysing therapist, I have a lot of thoughts.” 

Author: Laurie

Laurie likes alliteration, ambiance, and lists with three things.