HOME
Director Tim Etchells
Devised with and Performed by Jerry Killick, Richard Lowdon and Claire Marshall
Forced Entertainment bring their latest show Real Magic to real theatres and real audiences and so the endless loop of absurdity continues. Attempting to critique this show is probably as ridiculously hopeless and pointless as trying to guess the word on this gameshow/mind reading show. Real Magic is like musical chairs for demented amnesiacs.
Three people on stage. Three roles to adopt. Three possible words to guess. Three answers given regardless of who asks who the question. Three chicken suits. The magic perhaps lies in the myriad of ways this short, basic scenario plays out. The three actors gift this absurd, apparently mediocre scene with a wide range of emotional pitch and timing that shifts through upbeat fun to encouragement to intimidation to sheer desperation.
From early on it is apparent that this fruitless task is looping just like the canned applause. The internal dilemma for the watcher is when is this going to end?…..Will it magically resolve?…. Do I care?…..How many more times can they do this?…..Can they really keep this going for 85 minutes?
At certain points Jerry asks the would-be mindreader Are you feeling good? Are you feeling safe? Are you feeling confident? The same might be asked of the audience as the show progresses. Ultimately I guess this show is challenging our consumption of mediocre television shows and our sometimes tunnel vision around our perceptions about our world. If nothing else Real Magic is a masterclass in the art of cognitive dissonance and the risks of stubbornly resisting change.
The overly long performance does hit home the sense of time wasting watching banal television. There are lots of allusions to crappy gameshows parodying hosts such as Chris Tarrant. The word CARAVAN in this pointless show within a show is a cheeky reminder of 70/80s shows where people won caravans but didn’t own driving licences or cars.
I found myself drifting at times but perhaps that was exactly the intention. Did the chicken suits remind me of the jumpsuits worn in Guantanamo Bay? How many people were relentlessly interrogated when they could never knowingly answer certain questions in the way the interrogator desired? Was this absurd and bizarre scene a cut from the impenetrable Red Room in Twin Peaks? I keep seeing Jerry on the floor, sweaty and wild eyed like Killer Bob, with Claire in her evening dress as Laura Palmer and affable Richard in the suit as Agent Cooper. Perhaps I just watch too much television and need to go to the theatre more.
If I took anything useful from the show it was questioning How do we elicit change? Is it by encouragement, co-operation, education, by example or by intimidation? Or perhaps more worrying is the fear that we never change and just like the characters in Real Magic we are trapped in a nightmarish loop repeating our mistakes over and over and always failing to learn from them.
Live Art Alive 