You know the feeling. The alarm clock goes off and for a few seconds it’s all a blur before you slip into the familiarity of the weekday routine. This solo piece written and performed by Ramesh Meyyappan stretches that fleeting feeling of discombobulation across 45 minutes to ask what happens when you lose the sense of order we impose on our daily lives.
Six alarm clocks wake Joe Kilter and their startling ring is felt throughout the show, echoed in the insistent strings of Joel Nah’s score. Kilter’s attire – smart shirt, suit trousers, tartan dressing gown – and a set that doubles as office and home reveal how his personal and professional lives have merged. The pernickety way he shines his shoes and adjusts his tie may raise a smile but increasingly become as edgy as the fevered drumming of his fingers.
When an ominous brown envelope lands on his desk with a mock-sinister blast, he attempts to hide from its contents. Meyyappan looks as if he has aged 10 years as Kilter staggers away from reading it, discovering he has lost his job. The tragic way he hangs up his cherished suit jacket brings to mind the sacked doorman played by Emil Jannings in FW Murnau’s silent film The Last Laugh and his own security in his uniform.
As the furniture begins to play tricks on Kilter, Meyyappan’s wordless show, directed by Andy Arnold, is wise and darkly witty about mental health. Nothing is played just for laughs: a sense of anxiety underlines each gag and sleight-of-hand trick. While it ends a little abruptly, this piece about our daily struggle for equilibrium is perfectly balanced as it confronts darkness with a light touch.
- At Dance Base, Edinburgh, until 26 August.
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