To the drunken man who was asleep on Thursday afternoon in a downstairs bar in Southwark Street, I just want to say sorry. I'm sorry that we didn't believe that you were genuinely plastered and weren't acting. I'm sorry on behalf of myself and my colleagues, who sat down at your table, woke you, insisted that you weren't real, but part of a performance, and started giving you the third degree about secret codes. Not since the press night of Blasted has a group of theatre critics been quite so spectacularly wrong: our contact, a real actor, was sitting waiting patiently in the bar next door.
But that's what happens when real life and theatre collide: there are casualties. Another casualty is likely to be your feet in Accomplice, a walking performance around Southwark that's a bit like a perambulatory version of a murder-mystery evening. It begins with a phone call that directs you to a famous Southwark landmark and may end with you accessing a stolen treasure. Along the way, you must solve clues, decipher maps, collect coins that will eventually help you unlock the mystery, and encounter contacts who offer help.
It could catch on. People are going to have fun doing this, and experienced with a group of friends out for a good time it would be a novel experience, like paintballing or visiting the London Dungeon. But it's not great theatre. The actors are game, and on the plus side there's ice cream, chips and alcohol. But too little attention has been paid to the narrative and text; there's nothing at stake; and, though the piece uses the city as a giant set, it superimposes its own rather bland thriller over the genuinely thrilling stories of Southwark, so you could be anywhere.
