In Spectacular, Forced Entertainment have us by the short and curlies. We squirm in our seats, sometimes laughing, sometimes wondering when we can escape. It’s a show about death and playing dead; about ‘corpsing’ on stage versus taking the moment; about the ‘if only’ part of ourselves that is constantly craving what could have been or might have been, living in a permanent state of subjunctive longing. One character (Claire Marshall, in day clothes) ‘dies’ on stage, over and over again – with various degrees of drama, melodrama, underplay, and overplay – whilst the other character (Robin Arthur, in a fancy-dress skeleton suit) commentates, cogitates, ruminates and speculates on the situation he finds himself in – onstage in a performance that is somehow not going as expected. Where are the marabou-clad dancing girls? The orchestra? The warm-up comic? Absent without leave – we have just the man in the skeleton suit to take us on the theatrical journey, upstaged continuously by his ‘dying’ colleague. Spectacular builds on many of the visual/physical motifs and lines of theatrical enquiry of previous Forced Entertainment work, but also –surprisingly – has the feel of a Beckett play.

Robin Arthur’s performance is a masterful portrayal of an ‘unreliable narrator’. Just who is he and why is he on a stage? We despise his pathos and resigned disappointment; his humming and ha’ing; his down-the-pub storytelling tone. We love him for his raw sadness. He’s there because he’s representing us – poor holy souls loitering in limbo; somehow making do with what we’ve got while we wait for the final curtain to fall.