This Show Has No Name

This Show Has No Name

The talented Christopher Green (aka Tina C, aka Ida Barr) has taken his infamous Office Party to a new level of interaction in what can only be described as a show without a name.

This Show Has No Name is light on description, only promising that London Wonderground audiences will get the “chance to be part of the most advanced experiential piece of theatre ever devised”. With a clutch of critical praise for Office Party, and a grandiose mission statement, expectations are high.

The audience enter with a mix of excitement and apprehension. Extroverts lead the way, grabbing their own seats from the sidelines and plonking them in prime viewing position, while your more standard onlookers mill about wondering where they can hide and not get picked on. It seems the show is late to get started, so some people decide to entertain each other by letting off balloons, doing Mexican waves and eventually getting up to tell jokes. It’s also become apparent that there’s nobody at the lighting desk, as a small group of girls push buttons and plunge the Spiegeltent into occasional darkness or spinning spotlights.

So far so intriguing. But after the initial flurry of chaos, it becomes a game of spot-the-stooge. What appeared to be a genuine chance to see if an audience left to their own devices would take the stage themselves, becomes a much more structured affair. Some of the audience are clearly employed to be there, and start making us get up to do improvisations with them. When the audience realise this is the case, they become more reluctant to play the game. The stooges are forced to do it all themselves, trying to hold the lie that they’re not really entertainers, so doing a half-assed job of entertaining with tired magic tricks and a rendition of the Home and Away theme tune. The audience begin to leave, and it gets uncomfortable.

Yes, it’s innovative and a bit of a head-scratcher. It’s also a great invitation for extroverts to take control if they want. But actually, it’s also quite a cynical look at our constant need to entertain ourselves with anything that comes to hand. As though a paying audience wouldn’t want to see talent and story, and just pass the time for 75 minutes. You only needed to check Twitter directly after the show for a list of puns (“This show has no <insert comment>”) to see what the audience felt about it.

Whereas Office Party laid down some clear ground-rules and then invited you to play, This Show Has No Name just doesn’t tell you the rules, and has actually got a few cards hidden up its sleeve, which makes you feel like they’re cheating.

We were invited to a free-entry preview version, and so hopefully the team will have developed something special by the time they return in September with a pay-for-entry show.

Christopher Green will be appearing at the London Wonderground as Tina C tomorrow night  and as Ida Barr on 3 August.

This Show Has No Name. London Wonderground at the Southbank Centre. 16th-17th September 2013, 19:15-20:30. £8. www.londonwonderground.co.uk

This Is Cabaret as a rule does not now review shows ahead of their official debuts, no matter how much their PR company asks us to. This review was arranged before the policy came in and is an interesting insight into both an experimental and much-anticipated show as well as why we as a rule do not now review shows ahead of their official debuts, no matter how much etc etc.