Blake’s Doors

• Suzanne Black
• 10 August 2012

This article is from 2012

Existential grappling that overreaches its capabilities

Revolving Shed, from the London School of Economics, offers a bleak meditation on the human condition. A neat framing device sets up the idea of human life being something between everything and nothing, existing in the momentous and the mundane before jumping midway into a scene. With no context, the audience is prompted, promisingly, to examine the process of extrapolating a total reality from very few details.

Sequestered in a hospital ward that might as well be a Satrean, post-apocalyptic limbo, prickly young girl Blake exists in a cage of her own making and rages against anyone who claims differently. Moving from her personal angst to an existential enquiry, the script wrestles with monumental themes -- the existence of a higher authority, the purpose and value of a human life -- but the production doesn't have the gravitas to do them justice or charm enough to leaven the philosophising. Though a valuable undertaking the result is overwhelmingly pessimistic about our ability to answer such questions.

theSpace on North Bridge, 0845 557 6308, until 18 Aug, 2.05pm, £5 (£4).