Part of the Gate Theatre's USP is that every Artistic Director is allowed free rein on how they interpret the venue's remit as an international theatre. And while I've yet to see a cast get naked and throw food at each other, there's no doubting that Ellen McDougall's tenure is all about channeling the spirit of European avant-garde theatre. It's apparent again in Hester Chillingworth's staging of American writer Sylvan Oswald's
Trainers, Or The Brutal Unpleasant Atmosphere Of This Most Disagreeable Season (A Theatrical Essay), whose cast of two greet the audience in a white room filled with random objects which will come to represent people and things in the story. Such story as there is, anyway - as the final part of the title says, this is intended to be an essay rather than a traditional play, and part of the attraction of an essay is that it's a medium without a defined form or structure.
