The best of all possible worlds versus a normal amount of unhappiness: this is the drama at the heart of Voltaire's wicked, funny and silly satire, Candide. While the details change, this core philosophical tussle remains in Suspect Culture's wise yet wild modern-day adaptation. In purely theatrical terms, this is much closer to the best of all possible worlds than the mundanely miserable alternative.
The setting is a mammoth shopping centre called Clearwater, perfect just now for a spot of existential angst. Here gather a posse of disaffected teenagers (superbly played by local teens - the first time I've seen this done minus the cringe factor), a few grown-ups disenchanted with life and a band playing Pulp-like accompaniments to the action.
Colin (Colin McCredie) starts out happy, an employee of Fiesta Mexico, a foul fakery like all the other food outlets, but learns the hard way to distrust the empowering self-help corporate-speak spouted by his boss. He falls in love, falls into a living Hell, falls into an Edenic paradise on Earth ("that's not a landscaped car park, it's a landscape!") and by the end, falls out of them all into his own reconciliation with reality. The story we know, but it's the way this ver sion tells it that matters ultimately.
Thirty pieces of theatre - slivers of narrative for an attention-deficient culture - are delivered within the space of the shopping mall, as if it's the limits of our collective imagination. This structuring works emphatically to bring the point home: we have more than ever before, we have more choice than ever before, but we are also more restless, more disappointed with ourselves, than ever before. And therein lies the limits of this otherwise hugely engaging production: we already know that. Ours is a hard time to satire because we know the vacuity of our deepest and yet most shallow pleasures even as we indulge them.
The same is true of the self-help-speak satirically targeted throughout. Bridget Jones has already been there, done that, so it hardly feels cutting edge. What does is the set (it's the mall but it also looks like those bridges over busy roads, always home to bored adolescents), the music, the writing (David Greig, yet again) and the timeless observations that still feel just like now. "You hate us because we're different; we hate you because you're all the same." Teenage kicks in this instance, but true to Voltaire, too. That takes some doing.
Ends tonight, then touring to Newcastle, Aberdeen, Inverness and Edinburgh; tour details: 0141-248 8052.
