Like a volley of Ken Dodd jokes or one of the more circular songs by Sparks, L’Addition tickles its audience into submission and succeeds through sheer force of will. It is the work of performance duo Bert and Nasi (Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas) in collaboration with director Tim Etchells of Forced Entertainment and, in its loops, repetitions and variations, it is the comedic equivalent of serial music.
This English-language version (the work was first seen in French at last year’s Avignon festival) is presented in Edinburgh as part of the Here & Now showcase, and sets itself an absurdist challenge: how long can two men riff on one simple scenario, and how far can they test the audience’s patience before the whole thing falls apart?
Dressed in crisp white shirts and sensible grey trousers, Bert and Nasi are interchangeably a waiter and a diner at a restaurant. The diner calls for wine, the waiter offers a taste, then begins to pour. And pour. And pour. The wine floods the table, the tablecloth is removed, napkins and cutlery are cleared and the routine is repeated over and again.
With each repetition, a minor variant. The diner was shocked, now he is angry, now placatory, now impatient. The waiter is courteous then brusque, vacant, alarmed.
Overexplaining one minute, staring placidly into the middle distance the next, Bert and Nasi are very funny as they switch from being eager collaborators, completing and modifying each other’s sentences, to awkward adversaries, making this surreal game ever harder to complete. Stepping out of character, they stop to make sure we are keeping up, only to suffer an existential crisis: if they are not waiter or diner, who exactly are they?
And so, like a knockabout Vladimir and Estragon from Waiting for Godot, they repeat the old routine, however maddening or satisfying, filling in the time, seemingly forever.
At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 25 August. Then at Battersea Arts Centre, London, 5 to 16 November.
