Made in Chekhov 
Acting Lab: Perform 
Tobacco Factory, Bristol

THE premise is certainly intriguing: a theatrical re-enactment of the entirety of Season 1 Episode 1 of Made in Chelsea. The question is: why? 

In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, in which the working class is being extorted as never before — for rent, for energy dividends, and for wage cuts — it is certainly interesting to get a little window into the lifestyles being funded by the fruits of our enforced philanthropy. 

When it first hit the small screen in 2011, Made in Chelsea marked a transitional moment in the developing genre of “Reality TV.” Shows like Big Brother had thrown together people from widely divergent backgrounds and then let the class and intergenerational dynamics unfold as they may. All that went out of the window with Made in Chelsea, which focused exclusively on the lives and longings of a small group of pampered uber-rich twentysomethings. 

The title of tonight’s show begs the question: was Chekhov doing something similar? He too, after all, was attempting to document the lifestyles of a decaying and decadent ruling class in a realistic and naturalistic way.

The result of this blend of reality TV script and Chekhovian theatrics is, in fact, hilarious, and much of the humour comes from the absurd juxtapositions at work: the infantile words with the sometimes fifty-plus actors speaking them, the solemn delivery with the trivial content, the petty dilemmas underpinned by dramatic Russian music. 

The show’s one poignant moment comes in the awkward conversation between lovers Gabby and Olly (later revealed to be gay). Here another juxtaposition is at work, this time between Gabby (Freya Widdicombe)’s enthusiastic exterior and the unspoken melancholic anxiety lying beneath it, a crashing reminder that all is not well, even at the top of the food chain. 

There is no set formula to the depiction of the characters — some are played relatively “true;” others deliberately wooden; and some, like Francis Boule (Richard Harries) and Mark Francis (Tsvetelin Brankov), played as comic caricatures. 

These two were the most loathsome characters of the original series, the sneering superiority oozing out of them like tawdry volcanic pus. Boule is a diamond broker who we see posing for a portrait with a globe like a knockoff Cecil Rhodes, yet in Harries’s hands he comes across more like Mr Bean. Brankov’s Mark Francis is likewise utterly hilarious. 

It makes them impossible to hate, dammit. 

And this, perhaps, is the real point. Five minutes of Made in Chelsea is enough to bury the myth of meritocracy once and for all. And yet, precisely because of their vacuity, it reveals the lunacy of complaining about the ruling class or expecting anything from them. They need to be expropriated, end of story. 

Tonight’s performance speaks this truth loud and clear, straight from the mouths of their own children.  

Run ended