iConfess is a musical that bizarrely almost foils its own success by stumbling at the first step, namely billing itself as a musical. Had it called itself a play and proceeded accordingly, it would have been really very good: clever and witty with talented actors, and a great concept of having the audience scribble down their secrets to use to drive the improvised plot. With pretty much no scenery (and obviously planning on the hoof), the actors are inventive and quirky. The principal audience secret which drove the performance (“I used to eat ice cream out of the community freezer”) led to strong and creative stories about a homeless center volunteer stealing a charity’s ice cream, and a cult where there was no such thing as “I”. While it would have been much better had they used more of the audience’s ‘confessions’, the cast created good narrative arcs, which were pulled together – albeit rather loosely – at the end. But all of this good stuff is rather undermined by the inexplicable decision to choose to put on a musical with actors who largely can’t hold a tune, and a score that doesn’t even give them a chance.
