Forced Entertainment: Cold Sweat

Purcell Room, Southbank Centre

An intriguing theatrical premise

Four people left early. Technically five, although I had to stay to write this review. By the end of Cold Sweat, I was beginning to envy those who had made their escape.

Presented by experimental theatre company Forced Entertainment at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, Cold Sweat is conceived and devised by artistic director Tim Etchells, alongside performers Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall and Terry O’Connor. It is a production that seems determined to test the limits of theatrical endurance, although perhaps not quite in the way intended.

The premise is relatively simple. A soundtrack of recorded, AI-generated voices plays while the performers lip-sync to the dialogue, often with little obvious correlation between what is being said and what is happening on stage. Initially, this is quite funny. The disconnected delivery, strange rhythms and exaggerated expressions create moments of humour. There is also something amusing about the repetition, at least for the first twenty minutes.

Unfortunately, twenty minutes in, they really needed to do something new.

Instead, the same ideas are recycled, repeated and stretched to breaking point. What begins as an interesting theatrical device quickly becomes the entire show, with little sense of development or progression.

The stage design, by Richard Lowdon, consists of inflatable chairs, cups and bottles scattered around the performance space. Costume changes take place openly on stage, with the performers swapping cheap wigs and outfits that look as though they have been gathered from the nearest charity shop. Perhaps this deliberately makeshift aesthetic is intended to challenge theatrical conventions, although it does little to make the production more engaging.

The performers certainly commit to the material, and some of their facial expressions are entertaining. In fact, one of the funniest moments came when they directed wonderfully comical looks towards audience members arriving late. Unfortunately, these spontaneous interactions offered more entertainment than much of the rehearsed performance.

The vocal delivery is monotonous. Not quite monotone, but certainly far from expressive. While this is presumably a deliberate consequence of the AI-generated recordings to which the performers lip-sync, the result becomes increasingly tiresome.

There is also some fairly strong language, which makes me hesitant to recommend this particular production to school groups, especially as Forced Entertainment is a company that drama students may encounter during their studies.

Forced Entertainment has built a reputation for experimental, boundary-pushing theatre, and I appreciate that not every production needs a conventional narrative or recognisable dramatic structure. However, experimentation alone does not automatically make something compelling. For me, Cold Sweat was neither particularly funny, exciting nor theatrically rewarding. It felt like a company running on the coattails of its established reputation rather than offering anything genuinely innovative.

Of course, there is a very strong possibility that I have completely missed the point. Perhaps this is actually a brilliantly layered satirical comedy about the ever-increasing taxes in England, the collapse of meaningful communication and the absurdity of modern existence.

If so, the joke was clearly on me.

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