“L’Addition,” S’il Vous Plait

As part of Here and Now, a new Arts Council England showcase, Tim Etchells, artistic director of the celebrated company, Forced Entertainment, has penned L’Addition (The Bill), teaming up with the performance duo, Bert (Bertrand Lesca) and Nasi (Nasi Voutsas). The duo, dressed identically in white shirts and grey pants, stands facing the audience on a minimalist set; a small table and a chair, covered with an immaculate white cloth, a napkin, a glass and cutlery. In a direct audience address, the two reassure us about the kind of show we are about to see. What they relate will be brief, uncomplicated, not like the usual shows at Summerhall (the venue, where they are performing, is known for its cutting-edge, often challenging programming). All you can expect, they tell us is a Waiter and a Client. The Client asks for some wine, the Waiter pours him a glass. However, the latter spills it all over the place, after which he runs to get a cloth and clean up the mess. All the while the two performers share the storytelling, confirming or contradicting what the other has just said, deadpan, winking and eyeballing individual audience members. Many people were in stiches, including myself, the duo are first-rate comedians as well as physical performers. Then one of them abruptly changes tack and orders us to forget everything we have heard so far. They will perform the scene, which will make everything far less complicated. Having moved upstage, they proceed to act out the scene they have just described. They repeat it, but with major and minor variations each time, exchanging roles, changing the pace and intonation, growing angry and sad at times. When, for instance in one scene, the Waiter is about to pour out some wine from the bottle (there is no wine, it’s make-believe), he suddenly freezes, unable to complete the task. The Client reacts, grabbing his arm and guiding him to finish the task in a rare moment of solidarity between the two. Another scene dramatizes a fifty-year leap into the future. As an audience, we are invited to imagine we will sit for the next fifty years in this same theatre, without moving. We will grow old, some of us will die here. The pair then repeat the format, which by now the audience has learnt by heart, this time morphing into doddery old men, who totter along, attempting to perform the various micro-actions. The Waiter does his best to lay the table, but instead he fails miserably in a tragi-comic debacle during which cutlery and tablecloths fall to the floor. Towards the end, a moment of nightmarish chaos unfolds, when the couple’s routine is completely smashed – tablecloths, napkins and cutlery fly everywhere. The final part sees another quick change in tone and atmosphere, as the duo asks us who should pay. After all we have visited a plush restaurant, somebody has drunk wine, so payment is needed. Nobody, though, is illegible, the two conclude, performing what is a now a familiar U-turn: they are working as actors, the audience has paid a ticket, the Waiter, an employee of the restaurant, certainly should not pay, the Client hasn’t consumed a thing. The show ends with the two repeating, “It’s on the house’, their backs to the audience. In this absurdist, physical tragicomedy, the antics of Bert and Nasi are hilarious, the actors, at the top of their game. As in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, it might all be, ‘just play’, to echo Ruby Cohn’s seminal work on Beckett’s theatre, where play is coined in its double meaning of ‘game’ and ‘performance’. L’Addition, like Waiting for Godot, might indeed include multi-layers of meaning. If pushed, I’d say L’Addition riffs on our need, and sometimes our unbridled demand, for pre-ordained routines, order and control in the context of our consumer society. L’Addition premiered in French at the 2023 Avignon Festival, and ran in an English version from 12 to 26 August at the Edinburgh Fringe’s Summerhall venue. The show will be transferring to London’s Battersea Arts Centre from 5-16 November as part of the Forced Entertainment 40th anniversary season playing across the Southbank Centre, The Place and Battersea Arts Centre. Other highlights include the UK premiere of a brand new show, Signal to Noise, at the Southbank Centre, the return of 12AM and Looking Down, and Shown and Told at The Place, a dynamic performance co-created by Meg Stuart.

L’Addition, by Tim Etchells, performed by Bert (Bertrand Lesca) and Nasi (Nasi Voutsas), Edinburgh Fringe 2024. Photo credit: Vincent Zobler.