BLISS. To 26 April.
London.
BLISS
by Olivier Choiniere translated by Caryl Churchill.
Royal Court (Jerwood Theatre Upstairs) To 26 April 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 4pm.
BSL Signed 17 April.
Runs 1hr 20min No interval.
TICKETS: 020 7565 5000.
www.royalcourttheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 10 April.
A piece that needs testing on audiences who truly reflect its characters.
“It doesn’t mean audience participation” advises a notice outside the Theatre Upstairs asking us to wear a tabard with Walmart staff ID badge for French-Canadian playwright Olivier Choiniere’s play in which four supermarket workers obsess about superstar singer Celine.
As the characters, lined-up in the bare surrounds of the unisex staff toilets, face the large oblong gap in the wall between them and us it’s clear we’re watching them watching their reflections in the mirror. After Scarborough, where we perched on surfaces in a seaside guest-house, the Royal Court seems keen to make Upstairs audiences part of the furniture.
But when lights go up on the auditorium, people there look like an audience kitted out in tabards; there’s none of the corporate enforcement of a supermarket staff.
It’s symptomatic of the play’s flaws. It’s common, even in a piece an hour and twenty minutes long, to say it would be better twenty minutes shorter. Here, it’s the hour they could lose.
Celebrity obsession is all around, with populist newspapers and magazines screaming headline statements about the private lives of famous people who are recognisable by first name alone. But this quartet’s total immersion as they move from smiling talk of the star’s performance through her real-life trauma to an admirer’s gruesome experiences is unconvincing.
The only disagreements are over details about Celine; her star status is never questioned. When her (unlikely) in-store presence leads a checkout-worker to lose the company money, worker and manager are forced into reality, the manager worried that, in his star-haunted mood, he’s not been tough enough.
It’s a rare sharp moment. Generally, the intercut narration avoids the need to examine or justify the view of these characters. By the side of drama that’s interested in its characters, that searches out the life in people, this seems patronising and tendentious. If these people are so obsessed, why? And what’s to be done about it?
Obvious talk of tedious work and alienation is neither new nor sufficient. Well enough acted and directed, it’s still a play that merely provides the chattering-classes with more to chatter vacuously about.
Oracle: Hayley Carmichael.
Cosmetic Salesperson: Brid Brennan.
Display Assistant: Justin Salinger.
Manager: Neil Dudgeon.
Director: Joe Hill-Gibbins.
Designer: Jeremy Herbert.
Lighting: Nigel Edwards.
Sound: Christopher Shutt.
Assistant director: Amelia Sears.
2008-04-12 10:37:08