How long is a piece of string? Or, rather, how short can it be?
This is the question at the core of Are You Sure? by F.C. Zeri. Before the show even begins, we see Copy 1 (Ruby Wallace) and Copy 2 (Lucas Goddard) dressed in flannel with band tees underneath. They’re playing noughts and crosses, repeatedly, ceaselessly. They must have cycled through every combination of win/draw/loss before the lights go up. Copy 3 (Ethan McLucas) sits in the corner. Sporting a suit and tie, he types in half-darkness.
The song bookending this play is The Beatles’ ‘Nowhere Man’:
Doesn’t have a point of view
Knows not where he’s going to
Isn’t he a bit like you and me?
The stage is set for an existential production, one where anxieties about infinity and paralysis cycle through the mind of our protagonist, The Indecisive (Fran Parr). As they stumble on, late, and clad in a red flannel and a Nirvana tee, it is evident that they’re matching Copy 1 and 2, the warring factions of The Indecisive’s self-doubt. In their breathless motion we see traces of an uncertainty which will build, double, halve, halve, and halve again. Parr captures the character’s overwhelming awkwardness, and is consistently in motion, as frantic as their decisions are static. I watch as The Indecisive paces the length of the stage, picks up the mic, and drops it again, and I feel trapped – not in the small studio, but in the mind of someone wracked with an indefinable fear. As The Indecisive tells the audience, ‘You are the hostages of my doubts’.
Meanwhile, their flannelled Copies are fixated on the futile pursuit of finding half the length of their string, infinitely. This is their Instruction.
Wallace’s Copy 1 is cautious, perpetual fear knitted on her face, as she tentatively asks and advises – an identity rooted in inaction. Language, too, is policed – Copy 1 obsessively and urgently tallies The Indecisive’s use of expletives, a messy ‘Swear Count’ that serves as the only constant on the stage’s regularly-erased blackboard. Copy 2 is cynical and sick of maths references, yet epitomises the pointlessness of an over-pragmatic approach for somethingwhich is inherently unpragmatic: an anxiety disorder, which he dismisses with a flippant ‘what’s the point in labels?’. Goddard is responsible for most of this play’s humour as he draws crude symbols on the blackboard with playful mischief. Goddard and Wallace make a great duo, their mannerisms as juxtaposed as their words, the fast-paced dialogue of Copy 1 contradicting the drawls of Copy 2.
The play is, essentially, a monologue, though not the one The Indecisive plans to deliver to the audience – that is curtailed, driven off course by their Copies. Every time they reach a definitive, yet cautious guess at certainty, Copy 3 grows angry, McLucas cutting a menacing figure as he repeats ‘Are. You. Sure?’ For a part with three recurrent words, McLucas demonstrates an impressive flair, his anger (and occasional confusion) made palpable through minute shifts in tone.
Although I know little to nothing about mathematics, I watch with fascination as The Indecisive rambles about paradoxes, a clock ticking loudly in the background. They want, need, crave more time. This frantic improvisation becomes a quest for meaning, an unravelling (like that of the measured lengths of string) of an anxiety diagnosis, a failing passion, an impossible decision. Above all, it is an unravelling of the relationship between a child and a father – a father who, much like our Copy 3, is known for categorising, forever repeating the play’s title. Eventually, The Indecisive makes a decision – to change. They choose to don a suit and tie, becoming a copy of a Copy – becoming their father. The intricacies of this relationship are hinted at, though I wish this could have been explored in more depth through, perhaps, the hints of an explanation as to why The Indecisive is quite so scared to upset him. The Indecisive’s father is as ambiguous and uncertain as everything else about the play. Zeri’s writing reaches poetic highs when The Indecisive wishes for a return to ‘when time felt like a garden and not like a paradox’. All the while, Copies 1 and 2 are still measuring the string.
The production’s use of props was innovative. The string, as an actualised depiction of Zeno’s paradox that movement does not exist, was a reminder that the psychological makeup of the Indecisive will always be trapped in smaller and smaller infinities. The blackboard became an erratic and uncontrolled space for games, drawings, maths problems, and the words “HALF HALF HALF” over and over.
I enjoyed this production, but it was not without its flaws. Occasionally, the actors stumbled over or rushed their lines, leaving some things barely audible. The sound design was a little sparse, and though I understand how this serves a purpose of reinforcing the claustrophobic mindscape we are increasingly trapped in, the one inclusion of a downward-spiral-type descending chord felt random, as it only accompanies one of many of The Indecisive’s spirals.
But despite these factors, Are You Sure? delivers an enigmatic and well-acted discovery of what it means to decide, to be ‘hostage of the narration that got plastered’ onto one’s skin, and finally, whether in fear or in impulse, to act.
[Are You Sure?, a show by Déjà Vu Productions, is running at Burton Taylor Studio, Wed 27-Sat 31 May 2025]