When do you put a show in front of a paying audience? It is a tricky question, particularly for those who make devised rather than scripted work. Without an audience, you can't tell what works and what doesn't, but show it too soon and you could kill it.
BAC has this country's best developed process for nurturing new artists and new shows, but even it makes mistakes. After the lame Ladies and Gentlemen, Where am I?, which looked like a rehearsal in progress in the main house, it offers a second show whose promise is, to put it bluntly, not yet translated into an £8.75 ticket tag. Mind you, if you start applying a cost/benefit analysis to theatre you are soon on treacherous ground. Is Bombay Dreams with the partner and kids really worth the price of sending one of you to Florida for two weeks? Will the Malcontent offer more lasting benefit than a new pair of shoes?
Billed as a "playful meditation on magic", Patter is indeed playful and quite charming, but also entirely insubstantial. Following a magician and his lovely assistant as they put on a show, the piece combines an ironic commentary on the nature of magic tricks themselves with the tensions behind the cheesy grins and glib patter. The trouble is that this relationship, based on inequality, resentments and power plays in which she largely takes the risks and he takes the credit, is entirely what we would expect, rather than any surprise.
The way that the tricks are incorporated into the piece tends to be entirely illustrative. Sometimes this works rather well, as in the moments when the assistant is chained to a toaster and suspended over water, risking electrocution if she doesn't get the mind-reading trick dead right. The show needs more extreme moments like this.
There is undoubtedly a good idea here, possibly an excellent one, and since Peter Arnold and Melanie Wilson make quite a lot out of thin air you imagine they would be outstanding with more to work on. But we need to see more of this couple's relationship behind the scenes to fully appreciate it onstage, and the tricks need to be an intriguing part of a more multi-layered show, not the main event.
· Until March 23. Box office: 020-7223 2223.
