Theatre

Having unwisely begun by setting teeth on edge with some of the most excruciating audience interactions ever endured, Ninaz Khodaiji’s banal play (which she also directs) never threatens to recover.

On an empty, plain white set, five diverse figures, including the spectators’ tiresome interlocutor ‘Serbian Boy’ (Michael Chalkley), walk around spouting interwoven monologues – a collage of reminiscence, travelogue and lecture dressed as a meditation on different types of disconnection. It’s a yawning hotchpotch of nothingy musings and soporific anecdotes; no wonder the characters don’t want to listen, save for Liane-Rose Bunce’s gap-year bore, who manages to make enthusiasm seem like a mental illness. Her journey through Latin America creates the least unconvincing sense of place, but it’s hard even to feign interest in precious moans about how poorly accommodated vegetarians are in the Amazon basin. Formless and confused at best, ‘Strangers’ offers only clichés and portentous drivel on subjects as varied as 9/11 (brace yourself for some eye-gougingly ‘poignant’ symbolism), electromagnetism and the lost city of Atlantis.

The actors who could make this dross watchable don’t exist, but the current cast shouldn’t be forgiven their collective failing to master standard accents and we’re subjected to assorted multinational garglings for almost two hours. Khodaiji has found a terribly long-winded way of saying nothing.