It doesn’t bode well when you’re more entertained by a member of the audience than the person on stage, but Matthew in the front row is a hoot. Neither does it help that when the show starts, our performer doesn’t turn up. A rousing opening, a slosh of smoke, and no one appears. A harried stage manager legs it up the stairs and returns a few minutes later to begin again – it turns out clearance has been given too early so our star has no idea we’re waiting. This time Sian Clarke arrives wild and whistling, clambering over our seats.
An existential breakdown of a show, iCON is an attempt to grapple with the meaningless of life through childish distractions. The structure is scatty and inattentive, using the chaos of the outside world as a reason for presenting something that feels ferociously incomplete. Clarke is an amiable presence but an uncertain host. It is never quite clear what she wants from us.
The vague suggestion is that Clarke and the world are in crisis, so this show is an attempt to just have a nice time together to get away from some of the agony of our oncoming doom. But in the room the pressure of these crises are never palpable, and the thrown-together participatory diversions – joining her in melodramatic movie scenes, playing a game and having a quick tea break – do little to offer light relief, primarily generating awkwardness rather than full-bodied absurdism.
If the point of the show is that nothing can serviceably distract us from the horrors of the real world and we fail by even beginning to try, I would have liked to feel that – or indeed anything – far more clearly. But this is my fault really. iCON is a show that relies on audience participation and Clarke is clear that if it goes badly, it’s on us. “If this gets two stars in the Guardian,” she warns us early on, “you take responsibility.”
• At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 27 August
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