I just got back from London having travelled down yesterday to see “Magic goes wrong” at the Vaudeville theatre in London. The theatre ensemble are well know for farce style plays where there are all manner of mishaps. Its excellent entertainment and I’ve seen two of their shows, one in New York and one in the UK. I was therefore looking forward to the latest how which was co written by Penn and Teller.
We arrived early and as usual before the show various members of the cast move among the audience and start interacting, provoking all manner of amused responses. The key to this style of theatre is unpredictability and the cast are really excellent performers.
At exactly 7.30 the evening performance was due to start. Suddenly a guy appeared on stage proclaiming the show was cancelled and everyone needed to leave the theatre. “Brilliant” I thought, a superb creative way to get audience attention and both myself and half the audience remained in the theatre. Then the safety curtain came down and the guy on stage started to insist we all leave. “Wow, they are really pushing this I thought” and began to shuffle to the entrance as I knew we’d all be back in a few minutes.
Outside it was pretty confused and a woman dressed as a policewoman insisted we move behind the police line “Fantastic” I thought “She looks like the real deal” Me and the wife thought “Ok we’ll play along but I started to wonder about the practicalities of getting people back into the show. Anyway they would have thought of that wouldn’t they?
A guy then dressed as a policeman insisted we move further back and I thought “Wow even the police cars look genuine, they have really gone all out with this, BRAVO!”
There was just one issue to consider 10 minutes later. These were real police and it was not part of the show. Performance cancelled due to “suspect device” located. At least I got a programme, but will need to rebook. The fact that none of this made national news (it did make online newswires” shows how common such things are in these times…