An utterly hilarious look at the gap between how things should be and how they really are
Not so long ago I would've read the somewhat vacant synopsis of No Idea, frowned and risked being horrendously snooty by wondering why anyone would rely on Joe Public to come up with the bulk of the script for a theatre show. But Improbable Theatre's Lee Simpson persuaded me otherwise with the hit show Lifegame. Now Simpson has teamed up with actress Lisa Hammond and Improbable collaborator and performer Rachael Spence for this new show based almost entirely on ideas from the British public.
No Idea is a show about making a show that inevitably becomes a reflection on theatre, on our perceptions of what's on stage in comparison with the realities of everyday life. I doubt any description of the premise could do justice to the comedic flair that Hammond and Spence use to convey the suggestions they collected on what their show should be about.
By celebrating the ideas from the general public, what they have created is relentlessly funny. Hammond and Spence laugh at each other, they laugh at us, at people who ignore disability and people who feel the need to comment on it and we laugh along with them. Not only are these two brilliant performers but they've selected their material cleverly and with it created a well structured, well paced production that highlights, with firecracker comedy, the gap between how things should be and how they really are.
As theatre-makers, they embrace not only their own own self-consciousness but that of theatre as a medium. The show is only occasionally dark, slightly didactic and sometimes overly arty but Hammond and Spence think this too. What they want to show you is the difference between what we think, what we really think and what we actually do.
No Idea runs at The Young Vic until 31st July
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