100

Soho Theatre

Adriano Shaplin

Fringe veterans and theatre-goers should by now be suspicious of any 'Edinburgh hit' transferred to London. This suspicion should be reserved for both the occasionally shoddy productions and the frequently prejudiced critics, who love to spank the festival for loving too hard and too quickly.

Having recently transferred a show to London, I am loathe to cite unchecked Fringe enthusiasum as the primary culprit in this disappointing affair; but the shoe fits. A spanking is exactly what this childish show deserves.

The premise; and this is important, because all this show has is a premise; is four dead people are asked to choose one memory which will become the backdrop for their stay in eternity. Once chosen, a big camera flashes and all other memories are erased. The idea is clever enough and might be fertile ground for discussions of memory, time, and death. In fact, all the writers had to do to make this premise work was not spend an hour digging for every morsel of patronising 'cherish-every-moment' bullshit they could find.

Sadly, we are not in the hands of actual writers but rather a bunch of actors who seem incapable of penetrating the premise to the extent needed to make an improvisation work. 100 lacks a single compelling turn of phrase. No doubt 100 will make you ponder your own cherished moments, but not for long. I, for one, couldn't decode the rules of this game and still have no idea what made some memories ineligible. In the beginning, I thought the idea would be that no moment is perfect enough for eternity, but existentialism failed to make an appearance. Ultimately we learn that the camera is 'connected to your gut', and you have to 'want' the memory.

In the end someone fails to choose between numerous 'OK memories' and is doomed to wander this New Age purgatory without a history or identity. This isn't Sartre's No Exit, it's a clever Twilight Zone episode. If it was on TV you wouldn't shut it off, but you'd wish it was the one with William Shatner on the plane.

When it isn't excercising it's own glib banality, it manages to be offensive, introducing us to 'Ketu', a stereotypical 'native' surrounded by a 'tribe' of yammering Tarzan clones. Whereas the writers had the decency to half-explore the alienation of a London business class, 'Ketu' enjoys no such cultural specificity. The script describes him as animal-like and has him chattering about a 'wood-spirit'. He might be an Amazonian Indian or an intelligent baboon, this ignorant caricature doesn't tell us which. We only learn that he discovers the earth is round and is in turn persecuted by his tribe. Did the writers intend to locate the origins of science and narrow-mindedness in the jungle?

Also strange is the 'cautionary' ending in which a bike messenger fails to choose his moment before the deadline. As the least dynamic performer, Matt Boatright-Simon's tortured indecision is about as dramatic as that of a tourist struggling with a menu. As an audience member I felt an enormous let down at the end. What links these memories of discovery, amnesia and sex? They are neither achievements nor revelations, and if their significance is derived from the holistic beauty of the universe, I ain't buying it. I should have left the theatre wondering how I might arrange my own memories so they will better serve me throughout eternity.

Instead I left contemplating all the ways this play could have been better. That said, I could imagine a truly moving high school production of this play, or a series of rewrites with different casts and new memories. Surely someone involved knew this show wasn't ready to separate serious theatre-goers from their money? For your information, this show is about 50 minutes long.

Till 22 February