Meet Winfield Scott-Boring. He lives all alone and never goes out. His little flat is piled high with old copies of Sea Angler magazine (he doesn’t go sea angling, he just likes reading the magazines), and he works in his pyjamas, ‘fixing the unfixable’. At night he goes to bed with a Californian self-help cassette tape (old technology is important in Winfield’s life) telling him soothingly that ‘you are in control’, and we soon learn that he’s in love with the lady across the way who he sees watering the flowers in her window-box.
The oddly-titled You Obviously Know What I’m Talking About was a surprise. Something about the title of the piece suggested a hip, experimental, possibly multimedia production by a young company, and only that last epithet – production by a young company – applies. What we have presented here is an endearingly old-fashioned piece of ensemble comic theatre with song, reminding me of companies that were the mainstay of the devised theatre world of a couple of decades back (Théâtre Sans Frontières, Brouhaha, Theatre Alibi, et al). The show is supported by Escalator East to Edinburgh, and although it is not really breaking any new ground, it is certainly a competently produced and well performed piece of theatre.
There is a lovely set – all wonky door-frames, asymmetrical photo-frames and little lights sparkly in the miniature apartment blocks seen through the window – designed by James Lewis and built by Tin Shed Scenery. There are feisty performances by our team of four actors (two men, two women), who in their multi-role, all-singing, all-dancing gung-ho enthusiasm remind me somewhat of Little Bulb. There’s some ironic use of popular song (‘Come Fly With Me’, ‘Stormy Weather’). There’s a very lovely rocking-horse that acts as the conduit to Winfield’s freedom, and is one of many objects used very cleverly in the production. There is also a moment in which we watch a kettle boil in real time – perhaps a stage first!
Although I very much appreciate all the small visual, physical and verbal details that make up this wacky world in which Winfield has trapped himself, I am not greatly taken with the story itself – although it does all resolve itself in a very satisfying way. However, as a young company they get the benefit of the doubt – it’s a jolly good hour’s worth: well-executed, entertaining and gently funny.