SEVEN DOORS. To 25 September.
Chichester
SEVEN DOORS
by Botho Strauss
Minerva Theatre In rep to 25 September 2004
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.15pm
Audio-described 22 July 2.15pm, 28 July
Runs 1hr 35min No interval
TICKETS: 01243 781312
www.cft.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 July
High style and comedy in a philosophical revue.In one of Botho Strauss's 11 scenes an anguished Suicide meets his post-death guide, the Void. For this casually dressed Void, everything's in a day's work. The clash of the extraordinary and the routine is a theme of 7 Doors.
Whatever the Suicide's angst, this Void is only interested in the dead man's lab assistant, who sounds a similar sort to himself. Existential pain means nothing the other side of the bullet. It's a new angle on Sartre's Hell Is Other People; the other people nowadays just don't recognise your point of view.
Seven doors have spelled trouble, as image of choice and fate, since Aeshylus' Seven Against Thebes. Frustration courses through Strauss's scenes. An interviewer tries to record a pompously academic Prophet of Doom, whose words flow only when she's fiddling with the tape. A tenant is lost in a world where her landlord is replaced by a housing association's Executive Director.
A Man comes home having failed to get a Name The Tune TV prize. Disappointment and indifference are odds with the cultural awareness of Liszt, Humperdinck and Wagner the shuffling characters show. The Man' recurs in several scenes, reaching the centre of insignificance when he's picked out as by some kind of search engine (precognitive for a 1988 play?) as the most insignificant person in the world.
Strauss has been compared to Ayckbourn, though it's doubtful how he'd go down in Scarborough. Still, like Ayckbourn's own short play grouping Confusions the characters end up on a bench, here a long bench with a motley array from present and past, sitting either way, passing photos an image of non-communication.
Martin Duncan's production has a suitably spareness, a lean and distanced elegance. Performances rightly show no awareness of anything extraordinary going on; in this world normality is extraordinary, and being strange, or estranged, is normal. Steven Beard is outstanding, especially as a shambling Security Guard trying to hire a celebrity Bodyguard to stave off the fears arising from guilt. It's a gloriously absurd conversation, Chris Jarman's commanding figure unable to impose a sense of reality on Beard's furrow-faced insecurities.
Prologue: Kieran Hill
Tenant/Lady with Microphone: Darlene Johnson
Chairman/Man/: Stephen Ventura
Woman/Columbine: Sophie-Louise Dunn
Prophet of Doom/Security Guard/Suicide/Brother Freddy: Steven Beard
1st Man/He//Brother Johann: George Couyas
2nd Man/Convict/Void/young Man/Quiet Guy: Daniel Abelson
Salesman/Bodyguard/Emperor Julian: Chris Jarman
Messenger/Girl: Julie Barnes
She/Contented Woman: Fiona Dunn
Director: Martin Duncan
Designer: Ashley Martin-Davis
Lighting: Sam Gibbons
Sound: Gregory Clarke
Television images and footage: Carl Petts
Assistant director: Kieran Hill
2004-07-16 17:26:03