The invisible party

Attempting to talk to six performers from as many different shows in a single sitting is, at best, a challenge. Having just stepped off the set of the political comedy Party, an ensemble cast consisting of—deep breath—Tom Basden, Anna Crilly, Tim Key, Nick Mohammed, Jonny Sweet and Katy Wix huddle round a table in various states of distraction. Their production has proved one of the star attractions at this year’s Fringe, winning over audiences with a shedfull of virtuosic bickering. In his mum’s summerhouse, Jared (Sweet) and his comrades are trying to build a manifesto. But first they need to choose a name for their party, an image, a purpose and a leader – not to mention an appropriate time to break for cake.

The cast are all pleasantly surprised at how well they’ve been coping with the strains of a hectic month, but cracks are beginning to show. While Crilly and Wix are juggling the play with their double act (Anna & Katy), the rest all have their own solo efforts to worry about. Sweet may be joking when he says, “My show’s suffered a great deal; in fact, people shouldn’t bother” – but for Key the stress of replacing a technician for his show, Slutcracker, has been giving him horrific nightmares about sarin gas attacks on buses and, bizarrely, sacks of lemons. Dream analysts, make of that what you will.

Wix, meanwhile, has just recovered from a bout of exhaustion that robbed her of her voice and saw her bedridden for 20 hours. Luckily, Susanna Hislop of the Umbrella Birds was drafted in as an understudy – having to “read off the script because Katy was in bed, lazing away,” says Basden.

“But look at me now," laughs Wix; "I’m better than ever! I did some really great acting today. Just towards the end, for about eight seconds. It was like, ‘Fucking hell, that felt amazing.’”

Amid the chaos of a taxing festival, the group is remarkably upbeat. Party is approaching the final week of their run, attracting sell-out crowds and a slew of positive reviews. Still, as the man who wrote this glimpse into the petty workings of an undersubscribed and hopelessly misguided political party, Basden worries that today’s show was “a bit of a quiet one”. Clearly, his standards are higher than most.

Seeing his play, its clear he’s managed a refreshingly apolitical take on the political comedy genre: “I didn’t want it to be a satire in the way that’d mean using jokes that are everywhere,” he explains. “There were a few little topical raisins thrown onto the dessert if you will, but I wanted it to be something that could exist in its own right with characters that felt like they weren’t just parodies of other people.”

It’s in the exchanges between these characters—each played to perfection—that Party’s charm lies. They grope for opinions, argue purely for the sake of it and struggle at all times to preserve proper political decorum. Guileless, sheepish Duncan (Key) and rejected outsider Nathan (Mohammed) are the only ones not vying for leadership while the others—sleazy, obnoxious and clueless—squabble over the upper hand. For Basden, it’s all true to life: “I think those sorts of conversations happen a lot, especially at university. Those are the kind of chats you have that get very heated, very quickly and neither person really cares which side they happen to be on, and I think there’s something inherently funny about that.”

Assumptions might be made here that it’s a sneering comment on the competence and motives of real-life politicians, but Basden insists this wasn’t his intention: “Politicians in the UK are automatically given a hard time. Watching them squirming on Question Time, having to defend ideas that aren’t necessarily their own – it’s sort of what the play’s about: the idea of perceptions becoming almost the most important thing in politics.”

Yet in Party, any pertinent observations about the world of politics takes a backseat to sheer entertainment value. It’s full of brilliant verbal set pieces, but as a fairly modest writer and performer, Basden rarely claims the best lines for himself. Instead, the focus is allowed to shift to Key’s innocuous foolishness or Sweet’s arrogance, delivered in that strange, sonorous voice that is fast becoming his trademark. Basden seems extremely pleased with his cast – the minute he adapted the play for Edinburgh, he says, he knew exactly who he wanted on board.

I ask if that means the actors hold any similarity to their characters. “I’m quite highly strung”, admits Sweet; “I’m in love with Katy”, says Mohammed (Wix high-fives him); but Crilly, who plays the stern, radical Mel, says she’s never been much of an activist herself – “I was more into boys. I don’t understand a word I’m saying.” Rather, they are simply a group capable of the comedic rapport that makes this play so enjoyable.

With that, four out of the six flit off to prepare for their own shows, and only Basden and Key—together comprising half of the BBC4-approved sketch group, Cowards—remain. With most of the cast gone, I take the opportunity to move on to one of the more intriguing aspects of the play’s appearance in Edinburgh.

Party is one of four 2009 Fringe shows presented by an enigmatic new comedy venture aptly known as the Invisible Dot. Details of this collective are sketchy to say the least, but early indications suggest that it might just be a bit special. Holding its first shows in a Camden office around six months ago, the Dot rose from the same foundations as Arthur Smith’s faux modern art installation, Arturart, and is now making an impression with a similarly ambitious, site-specific stunt, The Hotel, directed by Mark Watson.

Since it materialised, the Invisible Dot’s London shows have seen a chapel and a photography gallery play host to a shifting lineup of comics like Simon Amstell, Simon Bird and Arthur Smith – a mixture of new talent and longstanding giants, the thought of which is enough to make any comedy fan slightly giddy. That Daniel Kitson—comedy’s elusive equivalent of Bigfoot—appeared at the first Invisible Dot Club says a lot for its ethos: this is one for the cult crowds.

Sure enough, when I mention the Dot to Basden and Key, a glance passes between the two and suddenly they’re full of disingenuous shrugs and deliberately opaque red herrings, as if adhering to a code of silence imposed by some sort of comedy illuminati.

“I don’t know whether we’re allowed to talk about the Invisible Dot,” says Key. “It’s sort of a mystical thing.”

“The first rule of the Invisible Dot is that you don’t talk about the Invisible Dot ”, says Basden, and Key yelps with laughter. According to Basden, “It’s a kind of Magic Circle thing. I don’t feel like I’m inside the Invisible Dot yet. I think I’m on the outside looking in”. When I ask if anyone is “inside”, they answer “No… well, maybe Simon”.

I’ve heard that Simon Pearce, a promoter who worked with Mark Watson to create The Hotel, is the mastermind of the whole project. “He’s the only one who really knows about the Invisible Dot,” says Key, stopping short of confirming that it’s actually just Pearce alone. Basden, evidently enjoying creating this mystery, claims never to have met Pearce: “He’s like the banker out of Deal or No Deal. I think a lot of journalists have gone missing trying to find out about the Invisible Dot and turned up in a canal.”

There’s a fantastically worked sequence in Party in which each member must summarise his or her own manifesto in just three words, and in a last-ditch scramble for a straight answer, I ask Basden and Key to do the same for the Dot. Key pauses in mock-deliberation: “Grey… golden… and invisible.” Basden is hardly more open: “Almost not there,” he smirks.

Of course, the two Cowards are blowing the whole thing far out of proportion and it’s got wild goose chase written all over it – but despite myself, I’m soon leaving baffled voicemails for Simon Pearce, Arthur Smith, anyone who might define the thinking behind the Dot. Needless to say, if there’s any substance to Basden and Key’s little puzzle, I’m still none the wiser. In any case, the Invisible Dot tag continues to reveal links to such a wealth of original comedy that to regard it with anything but a watchful eye before next year’s Fringe would be inexcusable.