Review: I SAW SATAN AT THE 7-ELEVEN, Soho Theatre
Photo credit: Jemima Yong
Christopher Brett Bailey’s I Saw Satan at the 7-Eleven is difficult to describe. It is a book on the stage, a debut novella slightly reimagined for a new medium, that sits somewhere between a screwball comedy, an Americana fable and a peep show. Bailey reads the novella from a desk on stage - gesturing and posturing but otherwise unmoving - for the hour-and-a-bit runtime, accompanied by nothing other than a microphone, script and some well-timed lighting changes. The simple set-up allows room for the tale to take hold, and it is surprisingly gripping for something that is, on the surface, quite ridiculous!
The unnamed protagonist from a dead-end town, two miles north of Hell, encounters the Devil in a convenience store. He’s let himself go a bit, and in his current curmudgeonly form is scaring the cashier while trying to buy soy milk. A wrongly-timed side-eye lands the narrator in the passenger seat of Satan’s car, listening to his conspiracy theories and deadbeat aphorisms, and the tale spirals out of control as the two form a bond that seems equal parts reluctant and inevitable.
The story, which is truly the bulk of the production, is almost perfectly pacy. The narrator bombs through introductions as if genuinely recounting an anecdote at a dive bar. The audience is never certain where the next joke is coming from, from which direction the next stammer of poetry or poignant observation will hit. At moments, it’s easy to see regular men in Satan: a divorcee going through a mid-life crisis, a washed up rockstar mourning his prime, a red-pilled incel fighting against an inner earnestness, or an abusive boyfriend you pity regardless. He’s all at once and also the Literal Devil, which Bailey plays with in constantly amusing ways, finding new concepts to shock and amuse. Despite the sparseness of the production, the story is never boring, as the narrator literally turns the pages of the script in front of you, and you wonder what could possibly be on the next one.
Towards the end, there are many pages which Bailey uses to paint a vapid Utopia, a world without Satan, which causes the play to lose momentum a little. The charming flow of the previous hour came from its huge implications on a small scale: an appropriate form of humour considering the show compares itself to South Park. However, this final segment is perhaps a little repetitive and unimaginative compared to the details of rat fornication, and queues around the block of both the police station and the cathedral. It felt slightly like the story didn’t know how to wrap itself up, and maybe that is a playwright’s final torment.
A delightfully blasphemous anecdote, realised simply.
**** Four stars
Reviewed by: Oli Burgin
I Saw Satan at the 7-Eleven plays at London’s Soho Theatre until 2 May, with further info here.
