Nic and Flora are trying to communicate, but Nic is doing all the talking. Flora sits at a laptop, a single daffodil by her side, her unspoken words projected onto a screen. They explore their feelings for each other through a game of Truth or Dare. Nic paces and circles, growing increasingly agitated and angry. Flora does not move. She is still, calm and passive. But it is Nic who has spoiled everything by wanting more than friendship. Now she cannot trust him anymore. Nic rages with a deep physical pain, works himself into a silent frenzy and falls to the ground. Finally, Flora has the space to find her voice and her words come spilling out in a torrent of anger and pain that has been held back for centuries.
Because Nic and Flora have known each other for a long time. A very long time. Any kind of relationship they might have now risks being shaped by what has gone before – the thousands of years of shared history that has ordered the way the world is now. If only they could find the words – a new vocabulary – to leave the past behind and talk about the future.
The most thought-provoking aspect of The Grand Scheme of Things is the rather unsettling way it attempts to place the problems of a particular relationship into a very long historical context. In trying to be just a man and a woman at a particular moment in time, they cannot ignore the shared history of men and women. After all the splenetic tirades, things do end on a broadly optimistic note, but after everything that has happened before, the hope feels sadly misplaced.
August 5-11, 13-25 at 13:40