Review: CONSPIRACY, New Diorama Theatre

They hear evil, they see evil and they speak evil...

Barrel Organ Theatre's three conspiracy theorists (Rose Wardlaw, Azan Ahmed and Shannon Hayes) take us deeper and deeper and deeper into a famous photograph that might just hold the key to unravelling...

Well, you know the drill by now.

It's all terribly meta - Jack Perkins's text (as the programme calls it) stopping and starting, disappearing down rabbit holes, popping back into reality, keeping us slightly off-kilter - rather as conspiracy theorists themselves do. Naturally, and often to comic effect, every refutation poor Rose has to handle is turned into another layer of proof, if only you had eyes to see those false flags waving.

It's timely of course, and, even if the trio are a little too much the product of the cookie cutter (Rose the serious one, Azan the put-upon one, Shannon the giggly one), they're quite fun company for an hour or so, Azan a very fine sulker indeed!

The conceit doesn't quite hold though, the shaggy dog story running out of oxygen as quickly as a moon landing with faulty apparatus. For all the marked up photos and the crazy links so established, a show of this length needs more outright laughs or more robust and various plotting if it is to achieve lift-off.

That said, even allowing for the farcical verbal adventures the trio pursue, the show does serve as a reminder that the conspiracy theorists always hold one trump card - sometimes they're right.

Who was it who starred in Capricorn One?

Conspiracy continues at the New Diorama Theatre until 5 October.

Photo The Other Richard