"Sight is the Sense," photo: Hugo Glendinning

"Sight is the Sense" is a more extreme form than either of these practices has produced on its own: a free-associational verbal exercise delivered as a monologue, the meaning of which is in no way dependent on Fletcher's physical presence or delivery, as these are deliberately static and mono-tonal.

Thematically, the show purports to "explore the horror and absurdity of consciousness", and Fletcher's speech, proceeding by staccato definitions of objects and concepts in declamatory phrases and simple language, seems to express a feeling of existential powerlessness. "A square has four sides", "Snow is cold",  "America is a country", "Blind people can't see anything": statements like these carry both the wonder and matter-of-factness with which a child approaches his world. Other phrases, which run the gamut from truisms ("love is difficult to describe"), clichés ("silence is golden") and generalizations ("busy people make bad parents") to opinions ("God doesn't exist"), simplifications ("water is the same thing as ice") and the odd observation ("Lions, horses and women make interesting subjects for statues"), indicate a larger concern with the spoken act and its various attempts to tame and order reality and the experience of it.

When a ladder is described as "two long pieces of wood attached by a number of smaller pieces of wood able to hold your weight", its clear that language can be obstinately unhelpful in transferring what we can touch into what we can know.  While the performance of these ideas does not communicate an obvious need (one senses that print or radio forms would be just as effective), the text convincingly questions the thousands of certainties on which daily existence rests.

In English with French subtitles. To Oct. 24, 9 pm, Théâtre de la Bastille, 76 rue de la Roquette, 11e, Mº Bastille, 13 euros-22 euros, tel: 01.43.57.42.14/Festival d'Automne: 01.53.45.17.17.

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