It should be simple and self-explanatory. The stage is simple. The design is even simpler. There is a table. A chair. A white cloth with some cutlery on. The curtain behind is dark red. A French restaurant. Done.
Still, Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas feel like they need to explain the setting and the situation. They show up on stage quite suddenly. There is no dimming of lights, the usual formalities of theatre abandoned. The two performers approach with a hundred percent presence from the very start, their eyes focused on audience members in a hopeful anticipation of everyone understanding what the show is about.
This is where things start to get complicated already, but Lesca and Voutsas will make sure you follow, checking every few steps of the story. If someone asked me to explain what the show was about in the simplest way, I’d say: it’s a show about a waiter pouring wine for a customer. Sounds dull? Not with these guys.
There is an issue with the wine, you see. It’s hard to explain so eventually performers make their way to the stage to perform a hysterically overacted scene. It doesn’t go well so they do it again. And again. And again. Just as you start wondering how they can possibly keep it up without it getting boring for the whole show, the sequence breaks and we’re back to analysing the scene. This is where the audience is invited ‘behind the scenes’ and can really appreciate the process of theatre-making at its finest.
Forced Entertainment’s artistic director Tim Etchells directs a piece that is beautifully chaotic in its structure. Playing with form, sounds and physicality, each scene presents us with different calamity, to the audience’s delight. This is experimental theatre for anyone who wants to step away from the mainstream and simply see something good.
So, what’s the show about? Is it existential, asking: what roles do we take on in life and how much control are we really in? Honestly, it doesn’t matter. Just go and see it.
Words by Sonia Hadj Said
