Someday you will die. And you can’t escape. So, you go out and find stuff. You attach meaning to the stuff. You keep the stuff. You need more stuff. You meet people. You get to know them. They’re weird. You like them. You give them your stuff or share it with them. You have a misunderstanding. You break up. Some idiot might beat you up for your stuff. You’re not quite sure why but you’re sure it wasn’t your fault. Basically, you’ve got one go at figuring out the messy thing that is life, and then you’re gone. What I’m trying to say: metaphysical scope isn’t really the problem of Fuel’s new show The Roof.
In a purpose-built arena on the Doon St Car Park behind the National Theatre, a headphones-clad audience is welcomed to a kind of nerdy live version of the board game LIFE, only with more rubber ducks and Space Invaders on the walls. The audience on the ground is surrounded by a kitsch cityscape reminiscent of the 1990s computer game Commander Keen: slightly non-menacing but very wacky. Player 611, after struggling with what looks like a broccoli monster which has had an unfortunate encounter with a shaver, only has one life left to fulfil the mission: get the girl, save the princess, hit an overgrown mothball suit wearer personifying your mother – the usual. One life left. Off you go.
There’s a hint of well-placed irony in inviting people to witness a videogame-style play they can’t actually influence themselves. The production struggles to extend its insights to the audience of what exactly there might be beyond the rat race of life. The solution to not giving and not wanting to give an answer is design, design, design, and playing with reiterations. Directors Frauke Requardt and David Rosenberg have assembled a cast of eight experienced movement performers and free runners who jump, slide and dance around the stage area. The set by Jon Bausor has lots of hidden doors, visual gags, and a plexiglas box with a woman who delivers a different service every time the player makes it to the end of a level. Guns, medi packs, a kiss and somewhere in between a point that our relationship to technology might make us lose our sense of urgency about life.
It’s generally a lose/lose situation if you watch a play that has the universal question of the meaning of life at its core. If it’s sometimes a bit shit and you don’t quite understand what’s going on, then you might argue that, actually, the artists have captured the point rather well. For example, it can seem quite disappointing that these free runners are constrained by the walls of the set. It’s all wonderfully choreographed throughout but they don’t do really do the expected risky, breath-taking jumps. They’re not free at all and their movement potential is in contrast with the 2D strip-like set around the audience. After 35 minutes of mulling this over my mind begins to drift and I start to imagine Nietzsche having fisticuffs with Kant about free will while dancers in zentai rabbit suits dance soothingly to the beat. Sorry if you just had a disturbing experience googling “zentai rabbit suit”.
Someday you will die. And you will still have all your stuff and some guy will have punched you and you still think it wasn’t your fault. Obviously all because this show you once saw, The Roof, didn’t make you care enough about not breaking out of the rat race. Or it did, and you’d still rather sit down to play Flappy Bird on your phone. At least you could play it yourself.
Written as part of the Ideastap Critical Writing Workshop for LIFT 2014.