Line at NSDF11 (from Noises Off)

The West is an impatient society. Increasingly it's also a highly individualistic society, with a rising determination to be first, to get to places quickly and to do so ahead of anyone else. It's a society where many do in fact want their fifteen minutes of fame – a society where the phrase 'me me me' really applies.

Each of the five characters (six, if you count Mozart) in Israel Horovitz's play Line are trying to get to the front of their eponymous line. It's not quite a bus queue (unless it's an especially cosmic bus), and must be a particularly significant opening of Ikea if it is one of those events that people queue for en masse. Whatever it is, these five Americans are really eager to be first. Second is apparently alright, but only as a springboard to first.

When a character reaches the front of the queue (doesn't really matter which one; their reactions are fairly similar), it tends to result in euphoria and gloating. So the front of that queue is clearly pretty important, and characters' attempts to reach the hallowed end of the gaffer tape provide the impetus to what passes for a plot in Horovitz's script.

When Dan Wood (playing Fleming) is hanging about in first place before anyone else gets there, Line looks like it's going to give us an examination of human behaviour while waiting. Maybe an exploration of human social interaction and how concepts of personal/mental space are affected by the arrival of new people to their territory (for want of a better word).

And – in a way – that is what York's students do give us. But Line is an inflated version of that, an overblown depiction with a set of overblown characters. It's no incisive dissection of human attitudes or interaction, if only because everything is so over the top; there is no reason given for why first place is so important to these five people.

But that implies there's a bigger picture that we as an audience aren't being made aware of (and to be honest, the characters don't seem too sure of exactly what they're waiting for, other than that it is not only important but also just that they be first). The line becomes much more than just a strip of gaffer, and the struggle for first place becomes a struggle for success in life.