Luck

Staged in the former Spiegel Tent and by a theatre company called Making Strange, Luck comes labelled with weirdness and whimsy. And true to its vibes, Megan Riordan pulls together a wonderfully capricious multimedia show in which she spills the beans on her peculiar upbringing and the tricks of her father’s trade as a professional gambler.

And the beans go everywhere with her hyperactive discussions flitting from one topic to another like a roulette ball bouncing recklessly between slots without ever settling. Sentences are left unfinished, subjects abandoned without conclusion, always restless, always in a rush to move on, like the impulses of a gambler, like the ephemerality of luck, cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching!

But it’s not her problem, and that’s because we the audience are in control – sort of. Those in the front row are given dice, coins and whatnot with which to determine the show’s fate every three minutes or so. With a bit of luck—and no two shows are the same—she’ll divulge some fascinating details about how her father’s team of elites gained an advantage on the house at Blackjack.

At other times we get discussions about superstition, a wild dance here and there, and—this may be what her show is really all about—confessions of her insecurities. And thus emerges from all the organised chaos the poignant humanity of an individual terrified by the vertiginous complexities of chance and probability with which she was made to grow up. This, I’ve learned, is something called ‘constitutional luck’.

Read our event feature preview for Luck at Fringe.