Thanks for Being Here review – Ontroerend Goed’s joyful show puts the audience in the spotlight

Zoo Southside, EdinburghEverything depends on the audience, so no performance is ever the same in a celebration of shared experience that’s perfect for the fringeFringe favourite Ontroerend Goed have a longstanding fascination with the audience. In one-to-one encounters such as The Smile Off Your Face and Internal, they have put the spectator at the heart of their own drama, often to discombobulating effect. In the hall of mirrors of A Game of You, Alexander Devriendt’s company made you the unwitting star of someone else’s play, and in Audience, it tested the limits of what you deemed acceptable on stage.Earnest commentators have fretted over the ethics of all this (me, I love the head-spinning thrill of it all), but even though Thanks for Being Here might raise similar questions about privacy and consent, it is done in such a spirit of communal joy, you would have to be unusually sensitive to object. Funny, accepting and warm-hearted, this celebration of the shared experience is the perfect festival show. Continue reading...

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