Theatre review: Happy, Greenside (Venue 231), Edinburgh

By MALCOLM JACK
Published on 24/08/2012 16:48

DESPITE its dark themes and creepily strong visual aesthetic, Municipal Theatre London’s Happy somehow feels flimsy and clichéd.

Happy

Greenside (Venue 231)

Star rating: * *

Actors with painted white faces and red eyes play the hideous boss of a big bank, his sycophantically cackling employees and his silently-suffering family.

This grim fiction intermittently steps outside of itself, when a philosopher character prompts us to use it as a prism through which to view the essence of happiness in a corrupt world. Issues of suicide, drug-abuse, domestic violence and rape are all touched upon, but in an almost cartoonish manner across a story with a predictable arc.

• Until tomorrow, 6:10pm.