The Visible Men, The Place, London

By Zoë Anderson

As special effects go, it's the lowest-possible-tech. In The Visible Men, the most recent show from New Art Club, performers Tom Roden and Pete Shenton urge us to close and open our eyes on cue. As we do, things vanish and reappear. A man heading for the exit finds himself walking in the wrong direction; a ball thrown into the air fails to come down. It's a good gag, but it does wear thin over an hour-long show.

Roden and Shenton are the comedy double-act of contemporary dance, dancing or debating with an air of geeky obsession. They speak as much as they move, squabbling over their material, making cod-philosophical statements, getting sidetracked. When they do dance, it's with gangling comedy emphasis.

The Visible Men, which is presented as part of Dance Umbrella, certainly gets mileage out of the eyes-shut joke. Shenton and Roden have a look of deadpan bewilderment at the positions they find themselves in, with props and furniture rearranging itself around them. Audience expectation is the other side of the show. Shenton teases us about cheating, his tone one of sorrowful disappointment: who peeked?

The odd thing about the eyes-shut effect is how well it works. Shenton and Roden joke about suspending disbelief, but you do fill in the gaps for them, even while laughing at the obvious fakery. There are some surprises in the switched props and scenery.

Repetition is part of this comedy; the pair spend time building up expectations, or subverting them. There's still far too much of the same thing. Roden spends forever reading at a table while books and breakfast cereals materialise around him. It gets lazy, particularly when Shenton turns up in drag for a voiceover sketch that goes nowhere.

The chats to the audience are also weakened by repetition. As soon as he mentions audience participation, Roden backs away, muttering about how much he hates it. Alas, though both Shenton and Roden agree that it's awful, they go ahead anyway and drag someone out of the audience. The skit that follows is good-humoured, but still dull.

Then there are some oddly pitched dance scenes. This is Modern, New Art Club's best-known show, was a very funny history of modern dance, complete with deadpan reconstructions. There, the solemn awkwardness of their dancing was oddly touching. Here, you can't tell whether they're straining for comedy or trying to be serious. Either way, something isn't working.