Tron
Theatre, Glasgow
Four
stars
The
face that fits is everything in Marius von Mayenburg's satire on the beauty
myth, brought to madcap life in Debbie Hannan's production of Maja Zade's pithy
English language translation. Martin McCormick is Lette, a hot-shot inventor
planning on punting his latest gizmo to a highly- charged sales conference. His
superior, Scheffler, has other ideas, alas, and co-opts Lette's pretty boy
assistant Karlmann to do the job on the grounds that Lette is simply too ugly
to get a result. Even Lette's wife Fanny is forced to agree, and drastic action
is required.
When
the bandages are peeled back after extreme plastic surgery, Lette's life changes
overnight, and suddenly he is the golden boy. Until, that is, everyone wants a
piece of him to the extent that the surgeon who changed Lette’s face finds a
whole new market in copycat identikit physiognomy that makes across the board
gorgeousness the new normal. Such is the way of supply and demand in a world
where market forces become a beauty contest.
Set on
Becky Minto's ice-cool interior bedecked in swathes of Katherine Williams'
pastel-coloured lighting, the production’s quickfire 75-minutes seem to
reinvent Dario Fo for a post-modern age. There is an archness to what comes out
of this, with McCormick revelling in the absurdity of Lette’s plight, with
Sally Reid, Helen Katamba and Michael Dylan’s comic skills keeping things
similarly snappy.
There
is much fun to be had in the operating theatre, the proceedings of which are
beamed out on a video screen in all their five-a-day glory, while the whole
thing is pulsed by a soundscape from Andy McGregor that reimagines the Swingle
Singers by way of The Art of Noise. As Lette and everyone else are forced to
look at themselves anew, the face-off, when it comes, is a sight for sore eyes.
The Herald, July 8th 2019.
Ends
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