Brighton Fringe 2016
Secret Innuendos
Random Acts Theatre Company
Genre: Comedy, Interactive, Theatre
Venue: The Claremont
Festival: Brighton Fringe
Low Down
Welcome to The Claremont Hotel, where strangers come and strangers go and some may stay for longer. People you might not be able to forget. Unfortunately. So, will a chance meeting with a stranger over a boiled egg and toasted soldiers lead to a fairy tale ending or a breakfast date with disaster?
Random Acts is a company of performers from diverse backgrounds including Education, Health Care, the Performing Arts, Training and Development, Media, Corporate and Charity work.
Playback Theatre draws on the traditional use of story telling in groups. Participants are encouraged to take part in the interactive process with the actors. Through improvised techniques, the players immediately recreate the experiences of the group members. These moments may involve issues of conflict, decision making and personal discovery. By watching their reality mirrored back, it allows participants the opportunity for transformation and change in order to realise their full potential.
Review
Secret Innuendos is an extremely positive comedy piece, full of funny and unexpected interactions with the audience. You may even call it a family therapy. This is a performance of complicated relationships, with love arriving and departing like the guests of a hotel.
You enter the Claremont Hotel in Hove where a lovely lady tells you that breakfast will be served shortly. Once invited into the beautiful and bright breakfast room, you become directly part of the performance. A hotel waitress, accompanied by pleasant guitar music welcomes you. The lady gives instructions to the audience. Once you find a place, she hands over some plates and cups…everything necessary for a proper breakfast. The public participates in the breakfast table preparation. You don’t feel like a performer but part of a real hotel breakfast. It all takes place in a very natural way.
Some of the spectators introduce themselves. A minute later the guitar player composes a funny song using the same words of introduction. At the same time, in this joyful atmosphere, the real hotel guests start arriving for breakfast. The show takes the audience to the next level. It is full of heart-breaking stories, narrated by the extremely funny and crazy characters created and realised by the talented performers.
One of the real virtues of this show is that it will be different every time it is performed, because audience participation and reaction will be different each time. That will make the show even richer – the unpredictability and the sense that audience involvement is key to the whole affair. Personally as a spectator, I enjoyed the realistic and unrealistic world elements. They blended well into the whole.
The performance is rich in strongly realised characters, and the environment in which the audience is genuinely part of the show makes this a successfully immersive theatre experience. It was really interesting to see the real hotel guests’ faces when the actors openend the door to come into or leave the room! This blend of immersive drama and the interface with the real world worked very well.
There was a huge amount of laughter in this performance . Several times the spectators were chosen to be part of a scene and, if it’s true that laughter is the best therapy for a happy life, this is the perfect place to be – extremely relaxing, powerful and positive – I felt pain in my stomach from this hilarious theatrical experience.
Finally everything comes to a beautiful unexpected end. Love will save the world. I recommend this – go with your partner or friend and you will definitely enjoy it. To me personally, it is one of the most enjoyable performances at the Brighton Fringe.
