Steen Raskopoulos review – fruitful but uneasy audience participation
Underbelly Cowgate, Edinburgh
Not every audience member press-ganged into taking part in the Australian’s sketches has the confidence to keep up with a stellar performer
Tricky business, this audience participation. A whole genre of comedy has bloomed over the last few years, propelling this most awkward element of live entertainment centre-stage. Adam Riches is its most notorious exponent; Aussie act Steen Raskopoulos is closing in and returns (after a best newcomer nomination in 2014) with another neatly constructed set in which the audience play key roles. It’s good fun, at least in proportion to the enthusiasm of Raskopoulos’s volunteers (and I use that word loosely). But tonight, they’re not always happy, which made me uneasy in turn – voyeur to the public discomfort of others being itself an uncomfortable role in which to be cast.
There is, I think, a disingenuousness at the heart of the enterprise. “I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I personally wouldn’t do,” Raskopoulos tells us. But he’s a professional extrovert; his audience, presumably, aren’t. His show unfolds a series of sketches that resolve into a story. A bereaved horse grieves his slain stablemate. A naive kid (returning from previous Raskopoulos sets) celebrates his birthday alone. A driving lesson handbrake-turns into a bank robbery.
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