Tim Bano
Forgive me St Genesius, patron saint of theatre, for I have sinned. I have never seen a Secret Theatre show. At least, not until now.
The cult theatrical elite gets the audience to pick from a hat a different protagonist each night to perform exhausting and, yes, impossible acts. Tonight it is Cara who gets to wear the gold cape. The impossible acts (not increasingly impossible but impossible nonetheless) begin: she tries to bend a metal pole, pack herself into a suitcase, move a tyre with her mind, eat a lemon. Actually that last one’s not impossible, it’s just very unpleasant.
The show is a collection of semi-improvised set pieces that are great fun to watch. There seems to be no real common theme, except nebulous things like ‘love’ and ‘gender’ and ‘whether it is possible to truly know someone’, and whatever we as individual audience members read into them. It is all show and no tell, leaving it to the audience to work out any kind of meaning from the fun and games.
In one game Cara is interrogated by another cast member about her girlfriend. In another she wrestles the others after listing her fears, trying to pull off pieces of their clothing. By the end Cara seems drained, but her good cheer remains. Part of what makes it so fun are the moments when Cara’s answers make her fellow cast members laugh. She is naturally funny and friendly.
Since they cannot predict who will be picked each night, the devised pieces are, in effect, cast gender-blind. There is cross dressing, an all-female scene from Romeo and Juliet, boys kissing boys and girls kissing girls. When Cara and another cast member swap clothes, she draws on a moustache, sprays herself with Lynx, downs a beer and kicks a football. Lad. It’s a provocation, but what is interesting is that the performers are so natural, confident, easy that the unexpected genders do not really seem unexpected at all.
All the participants are dressed as if for a trendy gym or an Eric Prydz video, and after it is all over and they have wrestled and shouted and danced and sung it is easy to see why they need the sweatpants and vests. It’s tiring. But the cheerful, talented cast make sure it is really good fun.
A Series of Increasingly Impossible Acts is at Northern Stage at King’s Hall (Venue 73) until 18th August. For more information and tickets go to: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/series-of-increasingly-impossible-acts