Theatre

Off-Kilter

Tron, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

four stars

A PLACE for everything, and everything in its place – a mantra of orderliness that seemingly defines Joe Kilter. And what, in the great scheme of things, is Joe’s place? Somewhere unobtrusive, among the very small cogs in the machine of everyday existence. We gather as much from the rituals that Ramesh Meyyappan weaves into this wordless solo about a lonely, isolated man for whom routine is the oxygen that sustains him.

His neat, precise actions are choreographed to the tick-tock of a watchful clock. Its hands have been racing round, as if marking how time is flying by without Kilter noticing, and yet those clock hands will be still when he sits down at home, his fingers drumming on the table because there’s nothing to occupy them, or his thoughts, beyond going to work. When a buff envelope appears, with a notice terminating his employment, Kilter’s world is plunged into chaos.

There’s some clever visual trickery and sleight of hand magic to suggest how the very fabric of Kilter’s life is going skew-whiff. Meyyappan’s ability to conjure objects, like pencils, into disappearing, re-appearing, multiplying, lends a mischievous humour to orderliness going AWOL. But it’s the inner melt-down, the shock and fearful vulnerability that Meyyappan conveys with every fibre of his body, that gives this story its emotional heft and harrowing edge. He brings Kilter to the brink of madness, even suicide, but – as followers of Meyyappan’s work will already know – he is an artist who seeks out courage, hope and redemptive transformation in his story-telling. This co-production with the Tron, directed by Andy Arnold as part of the Mayfesto season, is one of his finest performances yet.