The Sitting Room

Islington, 1893. You are the sceptical guest at a darkened parlour table, and you may not leave it — you may only turn your head, lean, hold the circle of hands or break it, and put a question. Mrs Silence Marrow raps, tilts the table, breathes cold across your ankles and sends a luminous trumpet up into the dark, while the room works hard to tell you where to look. Nearly all of it is conjuring, and the game is catching it — the thread, the knee under the leaf, the boots below the curtain. Six sittings, nineteen staged wonders, a verdict on each: name the method, or call it unexplained.