The Interview

Oh, this show is so Fringe. Two people, a man and a woman (called Man and Woman) in a white space. An interview is happening but who is interviewing whom? And what sort of a Kafkaesque world is this?

Perhaps a future bureaucratic dystopia. Perhaps an anteroom to eternity. Or is it simply an over-elaborate dating agency?

Whatever it is there are rules that mustn’t be transgressed, but that is just what He is actually trying to do.

But has He met his match, in any meaning of the phrase? And is She what She seems?

Alexis Clements’ play is Orwell / Kafka–lite, with a side order of Sartre. Both actors hold the attention with an edgy, confrontational relationship possibly turning into something else, which is not necessarily plot-wise a good thing.

Tom Foster has a lovely, knowing laid-back style as the Man. Katharine Peachey is excellent as the initially uptight Woman, dressed in a deliberately unfashionable peach outfit. Full marks to both of them for the way they held silences, all of them electric with hidden meaning.

It wasn’t their fault that their venue felt so like a steam bath that it was sometimes difficult to concentrate, which may have made the piece seem more obscure than it really was.

Sarah Norman’s tight direction kept it lively and, if the play doesn’t amount to anything exceptional, the performances make it worth an hour of anyone’s time.