It always helps in comedy to have a unique selling point and in a crowded marketplace Tarot is the only sketch show that mixes occult references with Bruce Forsyth’s TV classic Play Your Cards Right. The running order is chosen by the audience shouting “Brucie” as a performer’s hand moves over a row of Tarot cards.
Last night this spirited supergroup, featuring Kath Hughes and Ed Easton of Gein’s Family Giftshop and Goose’s Adam Drake, had to deliver on subjects including Justice, Death and The Hermit — the latter described as a loner. Or as Hughes wryly puts it: “Like a woman on a panel show.”
The fast-paced material takes in absurdly silly humour, bleak horror and a side order of gender politics. One skit referenced a dead parent, another offered tips for post-apocalypse survival. Everyone wears ghostly white nightdresses, except when Easton and Drake strip down to towels for a sauna-based routine that might be addressing masculinity or merely be a excuse to flash their bottoms.
An undercurrent of playful bickering about offstage dysfunctional relationships keeps things ticking along as proceedings build to a climax that is slightly scary but essentially just ridiculous. Tarot will not give you nightmares, though you might wake laughing your head off.
In the words of one of their less Satanic idols, didn’t they do well.
Until Saturday (020 7478 0100, sohotheatre.com)
