In theatre there is much talk of the live experience, the fact that the performers and the audience are in the same, shared space. But the reality is that many productions could still happen in the complete absence of an audience. That’s not the case in much of the work of Rob Drummond, the Scottish theatre-maker whose productions include the infamous Bullet Catch, in which he recreated the notorious trick on stage.
In that show, he got a member of the audience to shoot him. During In Fidelity, which will be at the High Tide festival following its Traverse run, he gets two members of the audience up on stage with him and tries to persuade them to fall in love with each other, in a light-touch show that looks at Darwinian theory and asks whether we are genetically programmed to cheat.
Early on in proceedings, Drummond lies to us, but then admits he has lied and tells us that everything that subsequently follows is true. But is it? After all, one of the things the show does is to question what infidelity actually is. Being in love with someone else but doing nothing about it? Sexting? Kissing someone else at a party? Even if you are sitting in the audience, the show puts you on the spot. The possibility that love is just a chemical reaction is constantly under the microscope, or rather an MRI scanner.
If Drummond’s own behaviour is put under ethical scrutiny, the piece also contains a structural difficulty: it has to find a willing and personable pair to date on stage or it falls flat. That doesn’t always work. There was the performance where only straight women put themselves forward. I’ve seen the show twice and while the format remains the same, as do some of the jokes, its impact is entirely dictated by the personalities of the dating pair. There is a published script, but of course it’s the unscripted elements that make it so gripping, not its re-creation of conversations between Charles and Emma Darwin.
On my first trip it was an utterly fascinating but uncomfortable experience, as one of the participants unwittingly revealed much about herself by her defensiveness. On my second trip, I suspect I was not alone in silently willing the pair to actually get together, because they were so clearly suited. They even looked alike. One of them admitted to fancying the other like mad. Her honesty was infectious.
Drummond isn’t just putting the truth and our personal morals on trial, he is putting live theatre itself in the dock.
Inevitably that won’t always work. But I reckon you should pay your money and take your chances. Because whatever happens it won’t be a dull evening.
• At the Traverse, Edinburgh, until 28 August. Box office: 0131-226 0002.
