My favourite thing about this production of The Chinese Art of Placement was that it had the ambience of a fringe play being performed off, off Broadway in a New York loft. This may have had a lot to do with the American performer Stephen Nagera who has actually performed off, off Broadway.
The play is by Californian playwright Stanley Rutherford and is about a man rather desperately trying to renovate his life. We spent an evening in the apartment of the very loud and frenetic Sparky Litman who has recently experienced an epiphany, which has made him give up writing his poetry. It was vicious, ugly poetry that he used as a sort of revenge upon the world that betrayed him. Having always felt like an outsider, he has made the big decision to become normal and so he plans a party, an elegant stand-up party with different kinds of wine and little things on sticks. In between his grand plans and his invitation phone calls he tells us the stories of the two main betrayals in his life, first at school then in the army by his country. Although he never uses the term Feng-shui, his obsession with it as he describes his new discovery, reveals that in his desperation to change, he is clutching at straws. Rather than making the real deep changes necessary to his life, he is merely ‘moving the deckchairs on the Titanic’.
I found the play quite funny and it was difficult not to become engaged with someone who has all the energy, charm and enthusiasm of Steve Irwin. So I couldn’t help but be a bit distracted by a large portion of the audience who sat po-faced in stony silence. Perhaps they were enjoying it in some secret intellectual way that I could not grasp. The rest of us were definitely picking up on the many laughs to be had. Stephen Najera gave a very forceful performance. He may have shouted just a bit too much, but then, he is American. The play itself was not really much of a revelation to me, but it had an interesting story to tell and we were lucky to have a charismatic storyteller to tell it.