Seven Doors

Synopsis

A surreal cabaret of contemporary manners. A sketch show of dreams. A woman leaves her husband after he fails to win a TV quiz. He's then selected by a computer to be the most insignificant person on the planet, and entrusted with the task of keeping world peace. Meanwhile a bride and groom realise they've forgotten to invite anybody to their wedding, a parking attendant enlists a bodyguard, and two monks exchange holiday snaps of hell. Botho Strauss' witty and unsettling look at the unpredictability of life in this world and the next.

Our Review:

16 July 2004

You enter a totally different world when you enter a Botho Strauss play – surreal, unsettling and very unEnglish. Which is perhaps why Strauss, one of Germany's most prolific and most performed living playwrights, has not been seen on British stages since 1996. We do like to know where we are. And with Strauss' Seven Doors, we're in alien, disconnected territory.

But then, Chichester's theme this year is “Out of This World”. Devils and supernaturals abound. In Strauss's 1988 social satire on the evils and absurdities of modern life, purgatory takes an existential, cabaret turn.

Now I have a great deal of time for Chichester's current artistic aims. It seems to me, if the first night's reception is anything to go by, that, with their European sensibility, the McKenzie/Pimlott/Duncan triumvirate are transforming their hitherto witheringly derided `middle England' audience into a far more hospitable, open-minded collection than many more self-regarding ...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com (193.118.206.221) - 21 July 2004:

In these incidents were these people's each others hell? Or was one the devil? which one? No theory fitted all. The vignettes were not quite interesting enough unfortunately but it was well acted. ...

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