The Imago Theatre is my least favorite TBA venue. Granted, the sound is better than at PSU’s Lincoln Hall, but the seats are uncomfortable, it’s always freezing, and the women’s restroom has curtains instead of doors so you can never tell if the stalls are occupied. Somehow, though, my least favorite venue manages to house my favorite shows, from last years six-hour Gatz to this year’s L’Effet de Serge, by Philippe Quesne’s Vivarium Studios.
Serge is a quiet, understated rumination on the comforts of routine and the role of art in the everyday. The entirety of the 90-minute piece takes place inside a half-decorated apartment; one side of the big room holds a ping pong table, a TV, and various electrical odds and end (like a remote control helicopter and an “electronic decision maker”); the other half of the room is empty, with a sliding glass door opening onto the driveway. We’re introduced to the space by a man in an astronaut costume, wearing an outsized illuminated bubble over his head, who walks us through the apartment like Neil Armstrong bobbling across the moon’s surface. He explains that the apartment is inhabited by a man named Serge, who lives alone near a strip mall, and that every Sunday Serge creates short shows for his friends.
When the show proper begins, it’s just as described: The quiet Serge comes home from work, watches some TV, orders a pizza, tinkers with some electronics, and then a friend arrives for the “show.” Serge provides a folding chair and a glass of wine for his friend–little dialogue is spoken. The show begins; “Rolling Effect on Music by Handel,” in which Serge steers a remote controlled car around the room in synch with the music, or “Light Effect on Music by Wagner,” which features car headlights flashing through fog in time with “Ride of the Valkyries.” After each show, his friends stay a moment to converse, struggling to find things to say (“it was interesting”), and then Serge escorts them out, inviting them to return. In between each Sunday show, a narrator informs us that “time goes by, time goes by,” as Serge sits and eats pizza, sits and watches TV.
Serge’s routine changes not at all between shows; the Sunday shows seem to be what he waits for all week, yet there’s also a sense that when his friends linger to discuss the work, he’s hoping for a reaction–an understanding==that he never quite gets. For the final show, all of his friends converge, and it is only in this scene that the word “friend” seems to mean anything: Serge is reserved, as he has been for the duration of the piece, but his friends know each other, and they greet each new arrival with hugs and kisses, raising questions of how the social dynamics of this group function. Is Serge the weird friend that they all both humor and worry about? Does the cute girl who brings him a gift have a crush on him? Serge seems oblivious to all of this, sticking to his routine, taking jackets, offering juice, preparing for the show. It’s sweet, funny, and just a little bit sad. Serge is not only a deeply sympathetic portrait of one man’s attempt to find some grace, however small, in his crappy apartment surrounded by generic chain stores–it’s also an acknowledgement that grace can exist in these settings; and, as you might’ve gleaned from the astronaut in scene 1, it’s also a quirkily funny show that breezes through its running time so effortlessly that you’ll barely notice the uncomfortable seats.