It’s a ordinary day in the fitting rooms of the upmarket department store “Marks and Noble”. As a result of an unexplained emergency, the area is sealed off by fire doors for an extended time. This is the situation faced by seven people in the play Fitting Rooms.
Quite a diverse group of characters inhabited these fitting rooms. We had the perky attendant who did whatever it took to enforce every single store policy, even under these extreme circumstances. There’s the argumentative woman who questioned everything and suspected everyone. A “pregnant” woman who tried to keep a level head, taking the motherly role while the others freaked out. There’s the ridiculously naïve socialite who jumps at her own shadow. A lawyer who approached the situation in a systematic way, collecting evidence to build a legal case against the store. Also thrown into the mix was a perpetually horny couple who had snuck into a cubical for aquick shag.
At first glance the characters appeared to have been derived from stereotypes, with their dialogue and actions easily identifiable. It was good to see that each character was fleshed out to some degree as their back story was revealed through their interaction with the others. Each one exposed another side to their personality that often deviated from your initial impression of them. This device also allowed serious topics to be included in the narrative. The plight of refugees was brought up by the lawyer when she mentioned a pro-bono case, Islamic terrorists was mentioned with alarming regularity by the Socialite and the recent industrial reforms came up when the attendant vented her spleen.
The majority of the dialogue directly resulted from the clashing of personalities, resulting in some quite humorous exchanges between them. Surprisingly the comedian of the cast, Adelaide Stand Up regular Rohan Harry, didn’t get a lot of funny lines. He instead played it rather straight, leaving a lot of the best lines to the others. The source of many an amusing line was the periodic announcements over the PA system. Using a plethora of inane “Retail Speak” and voiced in an overly condescending tone, these effectively ignored the lock down by pretending that the store was trading normally. I suppose a captive audience is indeed a retailer’s dream!
Save for a couple of moments in the play, it was a carefully orchestrated shouting match between the various characters where every line could be clearly heard. Although just like in real life, it finally descended into a chaotic din as the play reached its’ climax. The script was punchy, progressed at a comfortable pace and had the perfect mix of snappy one liners and serious dramatic dialogue. All the cast portrayed their characters perfectly.
The intimate audience was immediately plunged into the story with barely enough time to get comfortable in their seats. My only complaint was that the ending to the play was rather abrupt, offering little resolution to the events that had occurred over the hour. Apart from a few quick exchanges between the characters as they left, each one simply re-entered the outside world to continue their life. We never did find out what the emergency actually was!
“Fitting Rooms” was a highly enjoyable play that not only took pot shots at the retail industry, big business and consumers but also explored a number of social issues. The fact that it employed a decent amount of humour to do so makes it a show that provided plenty of smiles and laughs.