^{Picture: Manon Bollery}

‘It makes no sense, we need narrative!’ shouts James Thierrée halfway through Room. This elicits perhaps the biggest laugh of the night because we’re all in on the joke. We’re well aware that none of it makes sense and have all long since stopped looking for a storyline or any kind of meaning. Instead, embracing chaos is the key to enjoying Room, a show where moments happen then evaporate to make space for new ones, with no discernible link.

Thierrée is the director of this messy masterpiece, but he’s also the architect, sitting behind a large black desk and barking orders. As the set morphs from one incarnation to another, musicians play, singers sing, dancers dance, stage hands push and pull, and the audience looks on in bemused wonderment.

Enormous walls shift and turn to create new ‘rooms’, doors open and close, and costumes (lots of costumes) are donned then discarded. Thierrée himself is impossible to set aside; regardless of what else is happening on stage, all eyes are on him. His talent as a physical-theatre performer as well as his comedic timing keep this show grounded. For in the absence of plot, something needs to hold this mayhem together and Thierrée’s wit is the glue. He’s surrounded by copious amounts of talent, for sure, but he is the puppet master.

Somewhat miraculously, given the show’s length without an interval and lack of anything to really get an emotional, or even cerebral, hold on, Room only outstays its welcome in the last five to ten minutes. Would that we’d all had rooms like this to hole up in during the pandemic.

King’s Theatre, 14–16 August, 8pm, 17 August, 3pm.