ED FRINGE 2023 REVIEW | Chatham House Rules, Louis Rembges
★ ★ ★
Reviewer - Penny
*Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in return for an honest review
Written and performed by Louis Rembges, Chatham House Rules is so full of content that it can be hard to keep up.
At a large corporate event for a tech giant, we see the action through the eyes of Rembges' character, "Host", hired on a zero-hour contract to fill a number of service roles at the event - from behind the bar to pointing to toilets. It is run under Chatham
House Rules, basically meaning what happens at the event stays at the event, and absolutely no sharing of content to social media. What could possibly go wrong?
The start of the play is like a fever-dream stream of consciousness as Host sets the scene, jumping between fast-paced dialogue and multi-media films and images. We're taken through his Zoom training for the event, run by a corporate drone that the Host names "Dead Behind The Eyes". We don't learn any of the characters' real names, instead, Host picks on a characteristic to identify them, including "Eats Banana Really Fast" for an annoying co-worker, or "Ruin Me" for the fittest guy Host has ever seen (outside of London). With Rembges playing all of the characters this is a much more effective way of identifying people than to assign them "normal" names.
Unfortunately, the layout of the venue meant that I could not see the multimedia screen properly, and also at key moments, Rembges had his back to me, meaning that the first third of the play in particular was difficult to follow. I felt that there was a little too much build-up to the event itself, although this may have been down to the staging mentioned above. Once Host had arrived at the event, the play became a lot clearer.
This networking jolly for tech industry fat cats and Tory MPs had its guest of honour, referred to not remotely cryptically as "Pig F**ker". Having been lured back onto social media by the staff group chat, Host had snapped a photo of our former PM, disregarded the Chatham House Rules, and uploaded it to social media, where it quickly went viral and reignited Host's addiction to Instagram likes. As things spiral out of control, Host remembers his best friend who waited 27 hours to be seen by a doctor thanks to the government's failure to properly fund the NHS, giving him a deeply personal reason to want to satisfy his "troll army" of new followers who are baying for revenge on Mr Cameron.
Rembges' writing and delivery clearly reflects the impotent rage so many people feel at the state of Britain under the current Government, the responsibility for which can be traced back to "Pig F**ker". But as well as this, the script is peppered with necessary humour to offset the anger.
Chatham House Rules is extremely well written and performed. However, as its pace is so frantic at times it is not easy to follow. If you are not part of the social media generation, a lot of it will pass you by. However, there is no doubting Rembges' talent and commitment to this new work and its activist message.
