Super Night Shot

Published Friday 20 May 2005 at 10:40 by Douglas McPherson

The audience, gathered in the foyer, raise their voices in a rousing heroes’ welcome. Party poppers bang and tinsel is thrown as the Gob Squad enter the building, filming us with digital cameras and wearing very little clothing.

This is the beginning of the show and its end. What follows is what happened previously, as we troop into the auditorium to watch, on four screens, a 60 minute film - or, rather, four separate but interlocking films - that the Squad have just shot live, in continuous takes, on the streets outside.

The plot is simple. Simon Will is on a mission to free the city from anonymity by finding and kissing a complete stranger. Roaming separately around the streets, Johanna Freiburg, Elyce Semenec and Sarah Thom try to help him by finding a suitable stranger and a fitting location for the climactic kiss. With four cameras continuously rolling, what follows is a mixture of improvised theatre, reality TV and vintage Candid Camera as our heroes try to involve an embarrassed, disbelieving, disinterested and in some cases remarkably game populace in increasingly bizarre horseplay.

With the four films coming together in a split-screen montage, there are well-timed set pieces as, out of sight of each other on separate streets, the four launch into simultaneous dance routines, rap sequences and exotic costume changes, to the bewilderment of onlookers.

What comes across most, though, is the willingness of Joe Public to perform like a monkey for any passing camera.