Summerhall, Edinburgh
Four stars
Love, apparently, is not only the true meaning of Christmas. According to less than sharp suited corporate wonks Warren and Stew, love is the driving force behind crypto currency, that curiously intangible online exchange that has apparently made some who buy into it exceedingly rich. Once the emperor’s new currency becomes worthless, alas, they become very poor indeed.
Warren and Stew’s hapless evangelical spiel comes with a bargain basement alternative to the bells and whistles power point presentations beloved of the regular corporate lecture circuit where many of their ilk tout their wares.
To whit, a more interactive exchange - read that as audience participation - involves life size block chain choreography and anti banking escapology. There is a lo-fi re-enactment of a couple of Christmas crackers - sorry, classics - and a chocolate coin chucking competition that has shades of 1970s kids TV riot, Runaround. The retro feel is heightened even more by the fact that the coins themselves still have the late Queen’s head on them.
Glasgow based street theatre company, Adrenalism, Aka Lewis Sherlock and Andrew Simpson, come in from the cold for their comic dissection of how we fall for the corporate consumer con trick that drives both Christmas and Crypto, despite neither doing much in the way of good.
Big business may appear more sophisticated these days, but there are shades here of the late George Wylie’s ingenious 1980s anti capitalist vaudeville, A Day Down a Goldmine, which took a similar rise out of gold diggers of all stripes.
The dividends of all this, presuming there are any beyond the post show office Christmas party style karaoke, is an anarchic satire on how money somehow manages to make the world go round even though it might not actually exist. Real life tech bods, of course, will dismiss such scepticism as a way of counting one’s still unforeseen losses. Whatever, listen to Warren and Stew, and invest wisely.
The Herald, December 3rd 2023
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