Milkshake!

Milkshake! is the latest serving of magi-comic madness for the under-tens from master of mayhem Seska, who bounds onto the stage in a white suit, aviators and furry ushanka hat. Surrounded by an array of milky items (milkshake carton, cookies, a rubber cow’s head…) he looks like a strangely bovine club promoter who’d be right at home on Eurovision. Within the first five minutes he’s performed a hasty guitar solo, set his wallet on fire, attached bells to a small child and proceeded to shake him up and down in time to the frenetic backing track. He is mad. The kids love it.

Milkshake! is relentless, random and occasionally lost in translation, but this is a cheekily incoherent show.

In case we’re still not on board, there’s a fishing rod with a cookie attached to reel us in. Every child in the room is almost literally eating out of the palm of his hand. What follows is a riot of illusions and audience interaction: Seska swerves abruptly from trick to trick, interspersing deliberately transparent magic with genuinely impressive tricks. His rough and ready energy is unfaltering, but it’s a little one-note, and would benefit from some variation and emotional depth. We catch a glimpse of the potential for lyricism when an ex-smoker at the back of the room is coaxed into blowing her breath towards an empty wine glass onstage, which promptly fills with a gently curling cloud of smoke.

It’s an apt title. There’s certainly milk, poured into shoes and hair and ears, and we are shaken - in some cases physically. It’s totally bonkers, but Milkshake! manages to never feel contrived. Perhaps it’s Seska’s unpredictable manner: there’s something naughtily avuncular about him. He is, as he tells us, from Uzbekistan, and his malapropian vaulting around the language barrier provides much of the humour. It loses momentum towards the end, but the children revel in the sloppy chaos of it all.

Milkshake! is relentless, random and occasionally lost in translation, but this is a cheekily incoherent show.