What happens when the world's most boring person is stuck in the boiler room of a tanker? 

Then little happens.

"The Boiler Room" is a new play by George Vere about a ship inspector on a tanker going from Norway to Nigeria. He (Faheel Saud) climbs down into one of the boiler rooms and quickly realizes that the voyage must be canceled. The conditions are the worst he has ever seen. After reporting all the faults into a dictaphone, he climbs up the ladder to get out, but the hatch is closed. Then the ship begins its journey towards Nigeria, long before the original departure. No one can hear him or know that he is down in the boiler room, and with that he must survive a fortnight locked inside. With him he only has the dictaphone, a bag of nuts, some raisins, a CD player with "Hit me baby one more time" as the only song and a moldy slice of bread.

The set design encloses the auditorium, with a carpet acting as the walls of the boiler room. You and the actor are locked inside (fortunately only for an hour and not for fourteen days) with the only way out being through the theatre's emergency exit. The actor enters the room from the floor above through a hole in the floor and the claustrophobic and confined feeling is truly present.

The enveloping stage space is not the only means that gives the feeling that one is present in the action. The music throughout the performance is the same as the one he is listening to, namely "Hit Me Baby One More Time" by Britney Spears. With the exception of a discreet and pulsating synth pad that only plays one chord. The monologue form also contributes to the feeling that the audience is locked in with the ship inspector and I gradually begin to wonder what role we have in this.

Who is behind the imprisonment?

The script is shallow, and the action is stagnant. He gets hungry, complains about bad smells, water that tastes rusty, and he is bored. At one point he tells the recorder that he has many thoughts to think about. These stop because he misses going to the store, or that there are too few papaya nuts in relation to peanuts in Rema 1000's nut mix. 

As he tells me about the most ordinary things without much else happening, I feel an invitation to continue writing my own poem. Am I the one behind this two-week long imprisonment? If so, I have accidentally chosen the world's most boring man as my victim. What could have been an admittedly cynical, but interesting experiment on what happens when you are locked up in cruel conditions, turns out to be nothing more than an outcome the simplest hypothesis could have predicted. 

Like a fly on the wall in the boiler room with the world's most boring man, I'm gradually becoming convinced that he's hiding something. Why is it that he only expresses his thoughts on trivial matters? He occasionally mentions an ex-wife, but she doesn't get reflected on to a greater extent than the bag of nuts. 

The man is crazy! 

But in the end, both he and the form of the performance crack. After regurgitating, then drinking what he regurgitated, then regurgitating it again and then drinking it again, he collapses in hysterical laughter that turns into hopeless screams. The classic now-I'm-crazy. Then he takes out a microphone and addresses the audience directly. He gives us the role of his deceased child and tells us that the child died of illness and that he never really cared much, neither when it was healthy nor during the course of its illness. He promises that if he gets out of the tanker alive, the child will be remembered in a completely different way than he has before. This is a simple and uninteresting turning point, which only confuses me.

Was he so boring because he didn't dare explore his darker sides? It may seem that way, but I still have to classify him as an average person by dimensions. I have to honestly admit that having a deceased child that you didn't pay enough attention to as your big secret is dark, but not very exciting if you're going to create a good plot twist.

“THE BOILER ROOM” forms a good starting point for an interesting performance with scenography and direction that tampers with the fourth wall. Unfortunately, that is all I am left with, because I am unable to extract any substance from the plot. The script is so simple that it is possible to guess what the next line will be. Whether it is an attempt at existentialism, comedy or an actual depiction of an average person is difficult for me to decipher. In any case, I leave the hall with few impressions.