“Right, let’s get on with it,” says Jerry Killick, sporting a bad wig, in a deadpan Chris Tarrant tone. In the latest from Forced Entertainment, Killick is apparently a gameshow host, and Richard Lowdon and Claire Marshall the contestants. Lowdon sits blindfolded on a chair in his underwear. Marshall, dressed as a chicken, holds up a piece of cardboard on which she has written “caravan”. She is concentrating hard on this word.
To win, Lowdon must guess the word correctly. But what is the prize? Are the odds stacked so that there can only ever be losers? Who made up the rules? What is really at stake? Nothing? Or more than either the contestants realise or we can comprehend? When Lowdon fails – as he must – the invisible audience’s canned laughter seems to become more mocking, as if they know something those on stage and the actual audience don’t.
Lowdon’s muffed guess is the start of what becomes an endless loop of failure as the trio take it in turns to think of a word (always the same one), play host or sit in the hot seat and try to guess the word. It is an accumulating catalogue of disappointment – nobody ever learns from experience. The game is rigged against them. As the contestants struggle to find the answer, a clock sometimes ticks loudly like a time-bomb detonator.
Forced Entertainment’s most satisfying shows have often been spun around the clearest ideas: the listed confessions of Speak Bitterness; the endless questions of Quizoola! Real Magic goes straight to the top of the bill, wringing infinite complexity from three performers, six words, a multitude of facial expressions and the same scenario repeated over and over like a particularly demented Groundhog Day in which Samuel Beckett and Jean-Paul Sartre have both had a hand. It is devilishly simple and fiendishly intricate.
It is also hellishly entertaining and exquisite torture to watch as the performers find themselves locked in a puzzle for which the answer is always tantalisingly out of reach – even when it’s staring them in the face. Like the contestants, we as an audience go through a range of emotions – puzzlement, frustration, anger, exhaustion, sadness and total despair. But the game continues, apparently without end, and Claire, Jerry and Richard still get the answer wrong, even when they try to cheat.
It is as if they are trapped within a distorting mirror and cannot see the truth of their situation. I am haunted by Claire’s shining, eager-to-please face, convinced she must now have cracked it, failing to realise she can never win. Only when we refuse to join the dance, or play the game, will we set ourselves free.
• New UK dates to be announced.
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