Art and life are viewed through frames. We start with a photograph, “The Destroyed Room” by Jeff Wall. It is itself inspired by a Delacroix painting a century and a half before depicting an Assyrian monarch destroying his possessions and concubines in defiance of invading armies.
How and why did the room become destroyed? If you had to destroy something in your home what would it be?
This is the starting point for the trio of actors who now inhabit the room in front of us. This sparking point for discussion is only known by the one actor who delivers it. An innocent enough dinner-party ice-breaker, which exposes only those little embarrassments that we might not want viewed. Old teenage love letters, never sent; guilty pleasures.
Perhaps we now live in less innocent times, but we are certainly more willing to share things on social media. Surely there is an emoji to fit every occasion? When the chat turns to what we watch and how we view a potentially dangerous world from the security of our little island, the cracks appear.
The subjects are those that consume the media and no doubt fuelled many pre-Brexit discussions; immigration, refugees, terrorism. Over a few drinks and nibbles they talk about the ethics of watching, when it’s appropriate to view suffering and when to turn away. But it’s so, so easy to watch – just a click …
And now the audience are made complicit, as terrorist videos of beheading and immolation are described in their graphic detail. They question whether this makes us more or less connected and why some things deserve more empathy than others. The Paris shootings rate a tricolour on Facebook, but the Belgian bombings; well, it’s different when it is an airport. Life through a lens is not simple, as one of the characters complains that she can’t have her fuzzy five minutes with gifs of cats without being interrupted by pictures of dead babies. She does however enjoy a good natural disaster, where things can be viewed at a distance.
The on-stage cameras put the characters centre stage, fixing them on screen as commentators. There seems to be no need for journalists when all you need is a mobile phone.
As they twist and turn even the edges of the arguments start to crumble, blurring into the personal and the uncertain as they fight to explain what they meant and fragment into “did I say that?”
Against a rising background hum and static waves, the tide rises and leaves them swimming for meaning, trying to keep the social conventions afloat in the face of their inaction.
With the room destroyed the audience are left to forensically examine what happened. The production starts with an image and ends with one; and all in between depends on how you look at it and how you frame things.
This is a cleverly constructed piece of theatre. Just as with Wall’s photograph the room is not real, not a home but a space where, just like social media, everything is accessible and catered for. Some of us may never have the kind of conversation we witness but it is made compelling as a theatrical piece.
Not everything can be destroyed. Some things endure even cataclysmic events - even if it’s only our self-important search for meaning, inaction in the face of death and the detached belief that bad things will never happen to us.
Read Katie Michell's review of the Destroyed Room (10 Mar 2016)
Performance Times: 4, 6 and 8 August 2016 at 8pm. 7 August 2016 at 1.30pm.
Tickets: £8 - £25. (20% discount when seen with Interiors)
Suitability: Contains adult themes and strong language