The Secret Society Brighton Fringe @ The Walrus (Tusk Club)

Brighton has always understood the power of a good secret. A city that has sheltered bohemians, outcasts, eccentrics and queers for centuries knows there is something delicious about a closed door, a whispered password, a circle of conspirators gathered in a basement. This fringe show promises exactly that; a secret society, rituals, sashes, sacred objects and mysteries that must not be revealed to the uninitiated.

The Secret Society is the latest offering from the award-winning team The Chandeliers behind CSI: Crime Scene Improvisation, and it wastes no time inducting you into the fold. Each audience member receives a coloured sash, Mustard, Emerald, and others emblazoned with a letter, plus a card whose contents must be guarded with your life, or at least with mild social embarrassment. You are no longer a punter who paid a tenner and wandered in off the seafront. You are now a Beaver, a Turtle, or a Ferret, and the fate of the entire Society may rest on your shoulders.

What follows is an hour of joyfully unhinged immersive comedy that trusts its audience completely and that trust is the whole engine of the thing.

The show shares its DNA with CSI: Crime Scene Improvisation, a production that has been delighting Fringe audiences for years with its audience-generated detective capers. Both shows understand a crucial principle: pure improv, untethered, can drift into chaos, but improv anchored by a sturdy narrative skeleton gives performers the freedom to be genuinely surprising without ever losing the room. There is a real plot involving a Great Leader running fashionably late, a second-in-command with strong bureaucratic energy and an Elder who communicates exclusively in maddening riddles. That backbone gives the performers a reliable map, even as the audience tears up and redraws them in real time.

The crowd was a gloriously mixed Brighton cross-section with a strong and vocal queer contingent who took to the whole enterprise with particular relish. A pompous secret society whose grand rituals barely conceal the fact that everyone is improvising wildly resonates with anyone who has ever had to perform belonging. The show pokes affectionate fun at hierarchies and in-groups, and the audience's gleeful willingness to subvert the Society from within pure mischievousness.

Crucially, nobody was made to feel uncomfortable. Participation was entirely self-directed, people stepped forward because they wanted to, not because a performer had them in their sights. The result was a room that grew increasingly relaxed, generous and magnificently chaotic. Suggestions were inspired. The performers absorbed them without a flicker, weaving the chaos into the scene as though it had always been there, a reminder of just how sharp this ensemble is.

Some of the audience materials handed out at the start, the cards especially, feel like they have more potential than the current running time fully unlocks. But this is a new show still finding its edges, and the foundations are excellent.

The Secret Society is funny, warm, inclusive and deeply, committedly daft which feels something close to a public service.

The Society reconvenes on 24th May at The Walrus (Tusk Club), 10 Ship Street. Tickets £10 / £8 concessions. Age 14+. They're expecting you.

Full details on the Brighton Fringe website.