Before I enter the mobile caravan, I must surrender my shoes. Once inside, I find myself face to face with a beautiful stranger, Peter. He tells me not just about himself but also about us. He hints that he knows my secret. A few minutes ago, I had never met this person. Now he lays his innermost self bare and whispers seductively in my ear, suggesting that I leave the door ajar tonight when I go to bed.
Where is a performance located? A few years ago, that question would have been easily answered: within a theatre, where the exchange would have been between the active performers and the passive audience. Pieces such as this challenge all those assumptions. What if the real exchange is not located in the theatre but in a situation where two strangers, forced into sudden intimacy, meet to exchange two pairs of shoes?
Dries Verhoeven's Thy Kingdom Come is part of a new wave of performance practice that is asking challenging questions about intimacy, power and the audience's role. Does it work? Not entirely. I sometimes felt manipulated, and the script needs work. But it is an intriguing, unsettling event. While I won't be leaving the door open for Peter, I will for similar theatre experiences that make me question what a performance is long after the performance is over.
· At Chapelfield Plain, Norwich, until Sunday. Box office: 01603 766400
