Writers: Bertrand Lesca & Nasi Voutsas
Director: Tim Etchells
Reviewing plays can be a very odd thing to do sometimes. I know what I see and feel, but what about the people next to me? If my feelings about a show are evidently in the miniscule, if not singular, minority, should I assume that my assessment is correct, and just plough on regardless? When everyone around me is having such a joyous time, can I really claim that the problem isn’t with me? I’m going to try to do a tricky threading of the needle here by giving you my review, and what I imagine that of the 60 other people watching L’Addition in the New Theatre was, and allow you to make up your own mind.
Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas are impeccably dressed, and impeccable performers. Wearing white shirts and black shoes and trousers, they emerge onto the stage to join a table with a tablecloth, cutlery, and wine glass. They hesitatingly trip over each other while describing the performance we’re about to see – they will mime a waiter overpouring a glass of wine, over and over again, swapping roles as Waiter and Customer each time. They’re lovely performers, witty and smooth and comfortable, and their physical and verbal interaction is flawless in both this preamble and the performance itself, which descends into utter farce, a spiralling loop that gets even more ridiculous with each glass of imagined wine that overflows. The precision and delicacy of their movements elicit laughter at nearly every turn, but ultimately the piece asks serious questions about identity, autonomy, responsibility, and compulsion – why do we insist on roles, actions, and behaviours that we have solid proof will end up badly for us, leaving someone with a hefty bill in the end? They probe these questions gently, with a playful, engaging, and occasionally frightening streak.
The other side is that we have seen it all before; while Lesca and Voutsas are masterful performers, we have seen characters stuck in endless patterns of behaviour, so where is the new insight being brought to the table? So much is borrowed from Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, and others, that it feels like an exercise or warm-up piece based on their ideas stretched to 75 minutes. In failing to extend the dramatic ideas of Absurdism, they necessarily fail to extend its philosophical ideas. For all their humour and charm, it’s a shtick that feels very catered to a theatre audience, even a specific kind of theatre audience – it seemed like this was funny if you knew that it was, more than if you felt it.
However you feel, though, you will certainly never want to hear the word “waiter!” shouted across a room again after seeing this.
Runs Until 4th Oct 2025.
