venta

Honestly, theatres are like buses. You don't get any for ages, then three turn up at once.

Friday evening saw me sitting in a nice, comfy red velvet seat in the Kilburn Tricycle. I'm sure the Tricycle is supposed to be a cinema, but I've never yet managed to see a film there. I'd gone to see Marc Salem, whose website describes him as "a world-renowned mentalist". Which leads me to believe that the word 'mentalist' is used differently in the US. He does a Derren-Brown-a-like show of using science to fake mind-reading. Alledgedly.

I - despite being prepared to believe in all kinds of outrageous things - remain sceptical. I'm quite happy with the idea that theories from Neuro-Linguistic Programming, hypnosis, etc can be used to determine when people are lying, or to pre-suggest ideas to them. I just don't believe that that's exclusively what these stage-shows involve. I think there's a lot of standard stage magic and sleight of hand involved. Towads the end of the show, I don't think even the most highly-developed cold-reading skills could have produced such exact results so quickly; I believe there must have been a high level of technological cheating going on at one point;

Yes, I do regard technology as cheating, far more so than prestidigitation. The ability to move a piece of paper around so it looks lke it came out of a sealed envelope is fair game, a hidden camera is not. (As a digression, I'm always disappointed when ordinary stage magic requires doctored equipment. Something done with a trick deck or marked cards might be impressive, but it's always more so if it can be done with a standard deck of cards.)

I enjoyed the show - and some parts left me genuinely impressed and mystified. Whatever else he is (or isn't) Marc Salem is a showman and he is good-value entertainment. However, I would really like to see a show which actually does use nothing but NLP and similar psychological techniques. I suspect that, to an audience used to Derren Brown, such a show would be very unimpressive. It would presumably have a rather lower success rate, and take much longer. Having decided for myself that some of Marc Salem's (or indeed Derren Brown's) feats can't be done without stage magic, I immediately begin to suspect them all. Possibly I'm now unreasonably sceptical about parts of the show which were exactly what they claimed to be.

Having eaten a rather nice plate of pasta on the South Bank, in brilliant sunshine, Saturday afternoon saw grey clouds come rolling in as I headed to the Globe for the 2pm show. This was part of

snow_leopard's hen-night celebrations, so a group of us huddled damply in the rain as the minstrels cleared the stage for the performers.

I'm not familiar with Othello (I knew a couple of key details, and I guessed it wasn't going to end well) and for the first few minutes I felt that strange, panicky feeling. Ohmygod I don't understand Shakespearian English, hell, I have no idea what these people are talking about, oh no, this is going to be a long three hours... Then my brain gets into the swing of things, and I remember how to listen, and start to follow the plot.

Of course, there is always the danger that something important happened in the first ten minutes, which will be turn out to be central to the plot. I was fearing that but, having consulted with my friendly local English graduate, it seems that actually it never really is satisfactorily explained just why Iago hates Othello so much. Any suggestions to the usual address.

With all my attention focussed on trying to follow who was plotting what, with which, or to whom I didn't have much spare attention left to form opinions about whether it was a good show or not. I like the simplicity of the Globe's settings; not much in the way of fancy scenery or props beyond what is strictly necessary for the plot. Iago seemed to have the strength of character to carry the play through, though Othello seemed a bit bland to me. Desdemona also seemed a bit bland, but I might be prepared to blame that on Shakespear rather than on the girl trying to make something of a wet part.

Despite the confusion, I managed to enjoy it enough not to mind being alternately drenched and baked by the capricious weather while standing still for three and a half hours.

Having been briefly dragged into Cultureworld on Saturday, I reverted to type and went to see the Comedy Store Players on Sunday evening. They do one show a year at Regents Park Open Air Theatre, which is a thoroughly gorgeous venue. Sadly, it's also a bit non-roofy (the clue was in the name), but I'd booked all our tickets in January when I didn't know late July was going to be monsoon season.

In the end, the evening turned out merely chilly, with not a raindrop in sight. I experienced my usual reaction as the Players were announced...

"Andy Smart!"
"Who?"
<bloke comes on stage>
"Oh, him."

They came, they did what they do, we laughed, they went away. It was an enjoyable show. It wasn't, however, as good as last year's. Twelve months ago I remember laughing til tears ran down my face on a number of occasions. This year it was just quite funny. I suspect they have on days and off days, and sometimes the subject matter just clicks and sometimes it doesn't. I'd still recommend seeing the Comedy Store Players if you haven't.

(For Americans or people with their heads in buckets: the CSP are varied bunch who do improvised comedy and silliness. For Brits: it's basically the cast of Whose Line Is It Anyway? doing very much the same sort of stuff.)

Of course, most theatres have at least two decks, charge you to get in, and go "ding" occasionally. So they are quite a lot like buses.