Factors Unforeseen
Orange Tree, Richmond
CONFUSION. Capitalism creates confusion. As the credit crunch has amply demonstrated, when it comes to economics, no one knows what they are doing. Financial wizards, company managers and ordinary workers are all in the same boat – their horizons are limited, the ride is turbulent and anything could happen. But how do you stage this sense of confusion?
French playwright Michel Vinaver, in his 1979 play, Factors Unforeseen, reproduces the turbulence of life in the cosmetics industry by means of a fractured narrative and cast of 20. Showing how a small family concern is turned into an international company by a pair of American entrepreneurs, the play charts the rise and rise of Bronzex, a company selling suntan products – hence the pun in the title.
As the yearly summer campaign begins, decisions have to be made. Managers jockey for position and an advertising campaign is launched: but will this be headed by the slogan “Tantastic” or “Heavenly Body”? Meanwhile, the workers in the factory defend their working hours and their wages. No change there.
But things wobble badly when a celebrity, the gloriously titled Princess Benedicte de Bourbon-Beaugency, contracts skin cancer from spending too much of her time sunbathing. As she begins to appear regularly on television, describing the progress of her illness, the sales of sun products begin to slump. Sunbathing has suddenly become a no-no.
As Bronzex, led by managing director Aubertin and sales director Girard, struggles to adjust to new market circumstances, their parent company in the United States, the Cincinnati-based Sideral Corp, threatens to pull the plug, while their workers decide to stage a sit-in. Vinaver, one of the best post-war French playwrights, tells this archetypal story with enormous theatrical imagination and flair.
Using a whole barrage of techniques, from fragmentary voiceovers to stop-go dialogues, and from verbal repetition to short, sharp scenes, he recreates the fast-moving world of commerce and media in a spirited and satirical way.
It’s very easy to recognise this universe: despite it’s Frenchness, it’s the same one we live in and experience every day. Vinaver not only triumphantly paints a recognisable picture of society from top to bottom, he also conveys our powerlessness through his deliberate confusion of the audience.
Translator Catherine Crimp has resisted the temptation to update the text, and her fluent and appealing version is effective and delightful. Directed by Sam Walters, whose Orange Tree Theatre has done much over the years to introduce London audiences to Vinaver’s work, the play is smoothly performed by a large cast of 20. Memorable moments come from Rebecca Egan as the dying royal and Christopher Naylor as her interviewer, plus Paul Gilmore and David Leonard as the company big shots, and David Antrobus, Jemma Churchill and Paul Bigley as managers.
On the shop floor, Sarah Lam and Amy Neilson Smith provide some light relief as factory workers, while Lisa Stevenson is suitably gutsy as the angry trade union rep. This play is so accurate that it feels as if it was written yesterday – and it shows how capitalism rejuvenates itself by devouring its own.
Aleks Sierz
