Review: TAROT: SHUFFLE, Soho Theatre

“They (our parents, partners, children) say ‘sketch is dead’, but if it’s dead then where’s all our money going?”

Tarot: Shuffle begins a bit differently than your average sketch show. Walking into the Soho Theatre Upstairs, audience members are greeted by three performers, all wearing white nighties. Each person is given a piece of paper with a personality test on it, with questions including one about your ability to recognise patterns and another one in which you are expected to write no fewer than 1,000 words about a topic.

Being the personality test lover that I am (I was raised on BuzzFeed quizzes!), I filled out as much as I could as the rest of the audience filtered in. Another interesting aspect of this preshow entertainment? A sign encouraging audience members to text a secret to a number - something I did with great hesitation, listening to others to see if they were doing it as well.

Once the show actually begins, the performers are introduced individually by an announcer welcoming us to the “Improv Pageant,” with each “contestant” wearing crowns and sashes. The group known as Tarot, composed of Adam Drake, Ed Easton and Kath Hughes have been together for several years now, and it is clear from the beginning how comfortable the trio are around one another, truly feeling like a group of friends have come together to put on a show for the audience. Credit must also be given to the off-stage members, Ben Rowse and Kiri Pritchard-McLean.

Soon, the audience is introduced to the USP of Tarot: Shuffle. There are a range of tarot cards hanging on the back curtain. The trio have come up with two hours of sketches, but the show is only one hour long. How is this solved? It’s up to the audience to choose! And audience members aren’t just asked a simple question. Instead, cards are chosen in a range of ways including the personality tests, pulling slips of paper off of a jacket and reading out the secrets that had been texted before the show, with all options provided by the “alogrithm.” At the show I attended, we were treated to sketches related to cards including the Wheel of Fortune, the Devil, the Tower, the Priestess and Death. 

Without getting into too many spoilers, as the sketches are truly something you have to see for yourself, the comedy is brilliant in the way it uses misdirection, starting with scenes that may appear normal before revealing that everything is not what it seems. The trio also poke fun at typical sketch shows, including making fun of planned corpsing, but it is difficult to tell when they are actually breaking on stage - it’s fun to guess! In theme with the rest of the show, the ending has one of the best twists that I’ve seen in a show, let alone a comedy sketch show!

Tarot: Shuffle is one of the best examples of what sketch comedy can be, even if it has been adapted for the “digital age” as Tarot claims. Drake, Easton and Hughes have made a fantastic hour of comedy that brings a new concept into the world of sketches - free will. 

Tarot: Shuffle runs until 26 October at Soho Theatre.

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