Are You There?

Couple Francisco and Anna share their flat with Fergus. The arrangement is stranger than it sounds. Fergus is invisible (though apparently visible to the other characters) and mute. He sometimes writes to Fran and Anna on an etch-a-sketch, but spends most of his time being disruptive and destructive. He floods the bathroom, chucks a host of kitchen implements at Anna and pins Fran against the wall. At other times, he seems oddly like the couple’s child, variously reprimanded or comforted. So far, so weird.Muckle Roe Productions’ presentation of Javier Daulte’s Are You There? is certainly weird - and not always purposefully so. Take the sense of disconnect between the first and second parts, between which is possibly (and unnecessarily) the longest scene change in the world. The first part comes across as trite. Fran occupies the stage alone, talking to invisible Fergus and to Anna on the phone, and his dialogue is often turgid. ‘Listen to me - I love you’ he rambles unconvincingly to the handset, ‘don’t call me a knob,’ he begs. Either Jamie Wightman is struggling as Fran, or Fran himself is; the play, after all, focuses on problems of communication. Still, I am unsure.The second part becomes considerably more interesting as things complicate. Fran is actually a magician and, as it turns out, almost blind as a bat. He can’t see Anna, won’t talk to her for any period of time and the relationship is clearly fraying and tired. Seemingly the strongest marker of this comes when Fran tells Sophie, the girl he is interviewing for magician’s assistant, that his girlfriend died some time ago. The pitch of weirdness is upped, because Sophie is Anna. Charlotte Duffy, as Anna, gulps down the “news” effectively; at this point the play is lifting out of the first act’s mediocrity. Is Fran lying? Is Sophie really Anna, and if so how? At its close, the play is fascinatingly baffling.At turns dull, at others unsettling, Are You There? is different from usual fare. Check it out, but don’t expect to be wowed.