This theatrical gamble pays off
Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed has gained a certain notoriety for its provocative shows. Since debuting at the Edinburgh Fringe over a decade ago, the company has been making British audiences squirm. Productions have included Once and for All We’re Going to Tell You Who You Are so Shut
up and Listen which confronted the audience with canoodling, underwearclad teenagers; Audience, in which actors humiliated theatregoers in order to test the relationship between the audience and the performers; and The Smile off Your
Face which went as far as blindfolding and tying down those who dared to participate.
However the group’s latest interactive piece, a transfer from last year’s Fringe, where it was a hit, is one that is more likely to leave its crowd grinning than gasping. In £¥€$ (LIES), the group (under the aegis of Alexander Devriendt, one of its founding members) explores the pitfalls of the world’s financial system. But they do this in a way that, rather than being dully moralising, allows the audience to experience the thrill of the monetary chase.
The interior of the Almeida has been transformed to represent a dingy gambling parlour, as if from a Scorsese film, with poker tables arranged in a circle around the space, while we are cast as power-hungry bankers and divided into groups representing different banks. From there, the financial games begin, though it would not do to give too much away.
Calling on us to lay down our own money for chips that represent millions (as the dealer reminds us “you need to have money to make money”), it is an impressively immersive experience, which manages to convey some of the trading floor’s mixture of excitement, urgency and scent of opportunity.
As the game progresses and the stakes get higher, so the noise in the room rises, with cries of success, wails of loss, and fictional stock rates relayed over loudspeakers. The regular announcement of each banking table’s credit rating becomes an eagerly anticipated affair; participants wait with bated breath to discover who will outperform who and whether they will boom or bust.
It’s an evening of great fun, to the extent you sometimes forget that it’s theatre at all, although coming out into the cold light of day, you’re struck by its more serious undertone. We, the audience, have been played and a moral quandary laid bare: can we really begrudge the banking class their losses if we find ourselves enjoying the game as much as they did?