Parfumerie

(Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 26 November 2009)

Perceptiveness thrives in contentment. Misery blinds; so does bliss, but it is less common. Life's multiple dimensions cannot be recovered from a one-dimensional emotion experienced at any time, typically dominated by a life's single dimension. Changes of environment are required to induce variation in life's circumstances, and then some detective work is required to identify each circumstance's effect on one's well-being.

The only thing George (Oliver Dennis) dislikes more than his job is being jobless. At work, miserable, he is the man he manages to be; in his letters, he is the man he wants to be. In the letters, he is also the man he actually is, content because spared from the irritable boss's reproaches and an inept co-worker's (Rosie's, played by Patricia Fagan) inadvertent sabotage of sales.

The play is a fairy tale tinted with compromise. (Later, Hollywood found it profitable to discard compromise not to sabotage sales.) Rarely a play that does not miscast its leading lady is a failure. Neither is this one. Patricia Fagan is handsome and able, but not implausibly so for a Hungarian salesgirl she portrays. The ease with which Oliver Dennis's plain character wins over the girl is a testament to the story's compromise, but also to wisdom in simplicity, practised out of necessity---by characters as well as the company. Joseph Ziegler (Mr Hammerschmidt) and Michael Simpson (Louis Sipos) are responsible for recreating the spirit of Hungary, as Shakespeare intended to recreate Denmark---as a work of art, not as a National Geographic feature.