You Lucky People, Room: An Evening at Home

Review in Issue 11-3 | Autumn 1999

You Lucky People are an Anglo-Swiss company formed from a collaboration between theatre artists, architects, graphic designers and musicians. One would expect such an interdisciplinary group to produce work that is innovative, challenging and thought-provoking, but this project is disappointingly weak. Based on the writings of Georges Perec, the work claims to explore the mundane, funny and tragic events that happen in domestic settings. But in constructing a narrative about someone that is absent from their home, this piece simply cannot deliver the promised goods.

Rather than evoking any kind of sense of place (surely a prerequisite of anything subtitled 'an evening at home’), the clinical white backdrop and slide projections that are deployed as visual reference points only succeed in further alienating the audience from any possible connection with the performers. The lack of pace and energy, inherent in the piece and exacerbated by the performances (despite glimpses of humour and insight), renders difficult any kind of engagement with the tawdry text, and the unfulfilling physical action is accompanied by possibly the worst accordion playing I have ever heard.

There is potential in this project, and the performers do try hard to keep the audience with them, but as I left the theatre I couldn't help wishing that I really had just spent an evening at home.

Presenting Artists
Presenting Venue
Date Seen
  1. Jul 1999

This article in the magazine

Issue 11-3
p. 21