seven doors

Last night, went to Prop Thtr to see the closing night performance of Seven Doors, translated from Botho Strauss's German text. It was a series of sketches, as the program called it "SNL meets Samuel Beckett." We were in the front row and got a great view of the action.

Time Out Chicago describes it like this:
"Before Timothy Spencer’s handsome, multiple-doors, Japanese-screen-style backdrop, the actors file on and off to a squeaky-jazz-meets-Berlin-techno soundtrack, shuffling moddish chairs and door frames between scenes. The vignettes themselves drop logical-extension conundrums into standard dialogue of everyday frustration: A disgruntled tenant complains to his faceless corporate landlord that another building is squatting inside his; a bodyguard-for-hire considers a society entirely structured by bodyguardism; a Cubs-like public failure is given the full Hollywood treatment. Strauss’s wry, thin-air trains of thought arise organically from each situation, bending back to Earth when just about to disintegrate."

Um, yeah. I liked it, was amused by it but felt often that it was too smart for me - like there was a deeper meaning to the words that I should be getting but wasn't. I think maybe another viewing would have been helpful, there was a lot going on in each sketch that focusing on it all would have been impossible. The language was a little bit odd as well, kind of obviously translated, the sentences were all declaimed, Shakespeare style and included clunky phrases like "the building in which I live" - it reminded me of reading philosophy and I guess it was a kind of philosophy, about the connection of people with other people.