Writer: Roger Francis
Director: Sot A
Existential questions are tough subjects to put on a stage, but Roger Francis gives it a go. Toby Dasein (Jacob Kay) doesn’t know why he’s here or what he’s for, and this bothers him. The philosopher Martin Heidegger, as the programme informs us, spent a lifetime considering these dilemmas. Heidegger doesn’t appear to help much, despite giving a name -dasein – to this state of confusion.
Another element that proves unhelpful is the helpline to God in her multiple personality guise as Adonai, a word which (the programme tells us) was employed by Hebrew speakers to avoid calling God God. When Toby eventually gets connected to a voice, that of Adonai 3.2, slinkily embodied by Helen Baird, his troubles really start.
Because existential questions are tough to stage, the playlet devolves into a fairly uncontentious meta-farce, with characters occasionally noticing they’re in a play with a bunch of strangers looking at them, but there is a pervading sense that Roger Francis would really rather be talking about Heidegger.
The cast of three work hard. Toby Kay is blessed with a really mobile, interesting face, which makes the long non-speaking passages very watchable, indeed the most entertaining part of the 50-minute piece. Helen Baird’s self-obsessed style queen is also treasurable. Otilia de Royer completes the troupe, as the aspect of Adonai tasked with putting things to rights, but suffers from the writer’s loss of confidence. She gets to work with a comic set-up that is nowhere near as intriguing as the existential premise of the opening. The search for meaning as sketch comedy is an idea worth exploring, this slightly half-hearted farce is much less original, much less interesting, and really unchallenging.
This is a pleasant, unthreatening comic skit. That it could have been more than that is a call to the company to do something more representative of their evident talent. There should have been C-Beams glittering near the Tannhäuser Gate, instead of a soggy skit.
Runs until 5 April 2025
