Moving dexterously between paranoid nightmare sequences and kitsch music numbers, You Obviously Know What I’m Talking About tells the story of nervous recluse Winfield Scott Boring in an hour long show that becomes a positive sine curve of climax and denouement.
For years preceding the day on which the play is set, Winfield has spent his time exclusively inside a tiny room, fastidiously completing a routine that helps him keep the threat of the world at bay. Today, however, the routine falls apart.
As he negotiates the sudden interference of noise and people, Winfield becomes more and more panicky, something that Richard Keiss’ schizoid movements are good at giving life to. Winfield’s few words are compensated for by Keiss’ commendably expressive physicality, acting that can only be criticized for becoming, after a while, somewhat predictable.
Of course, caricatures are to be expected from a show that is pitched somewhere between storytelling and musical theatre. From the chorus’ expressions to the stage design, the play’s dominating aesthetic anticipated the action that played out – the unfortunate price of which is its ability to really surprise.
Still, the stage design is one of the most impressive parts of the production, a happy reward for occasional blandness. The set, a Dr Seuss illustration of higgledy piggledy angles, is kept interesting by the technically brilliant way it is manipulated by the cast. A kitchen cupboard is a passageway through which demonic figures emerge; the upper panel of a closet door also becomes a window complete with pretty girl and flower box.
Different sections of the play that could have felt uncomfortably fragmented (Winfield, managing at last to record a youtube video he’s been struggling with for hours, breaks into some jazz), are kept fluid by the chorus. They are aided in this endeavour by a simple yet appropriate soundtrack, and a straightforward storyline that balances out the surreal action. And, of course, there is the skinny, pyjama-clad Winfield, the linchpin around whom the play intelligently rotates.
