The Secret Agent
[author-post-rating] (2/5 Stars)

The opening sequence of The Secret Agent owes a little something to music hall, as Verloc, the secret agent of the title, addresses the audience in a style reminiscent of a music hall barker. He then unveils his wife, secluded inside the Cabinet of Desires, before putting her back, getting her out again, setting her loose on the audience, all while ranting noisily about power and control. It’s strange and highly stylised – it’s also difficult to see quite how this is related to Joseph Conrad’s novel of the same title. Perhaps the erotic inquisition Winnie conducts with several audience members is supposed to be a reference to Verloc’s Soho shop, which stocks pornography and contraceptives behind a respectable veneer. Shocking stuff in 1907, when the novel was published.

There’s nothing particularly shocking in this production, though. Theatre O’s The Secret Agent is as slick as can be: well-rehearsed and very well acted, it begins in such a high-concept and anarchic manner that you wonder what it is doing at such a big Fringe venue. They even get people out of the audience for a bit and pop them on stage. On and on it anarchically goes, with smutty limericks and rampant audience-bothering – until, out of nowhere, it settles down and becomes a relatively straight adaptation of the novel, about three scenes in.

Verloc is a secret agent in the pay of a Russian Embassy, infiltrating anarchist cells; the anarchists believe he is one of them, but he’s also on the payroll of the police. Verloc’s working week is so swollen up with secrets and double-crossings, it’s no wonder that it bursts like a balloon across his personal life. After being told by a mad contact at the Embassy to blow up the Greenwich Meridian line, manipulative Verloc idiotically brings the violence right to his own doorstep.

The Secret Agent is relatively good fun and well-acted by the cast, who also collaborated in devising the piece; Leander Deeny shines in two hugely contrasting roles. But the opening section feels like it is from a completely different rehearsal process or even play to the main body of the piece, and the use of music hall-style is slightly inexplicable. None of this is too surprising, though, as Theatre O doesn’t seem overly concerned with the point or themes of the novel. They seem to be far more interested in is using it simply as a jumping off-point, in order to create theatre that is stylish, beautiful to look at and shallow.

The Secret Agent can be seen at 12.45 at the Traverse, every day until 25 August. For more information and tickets, visit the Edinburgh Fringe website.