Theatre / 60 min / £10(£8), £11(£9) / 12+
Showing @ Gilded Balloon Teviot, until 26 Aug, 14.15
Commodity fetishism, planned obsolescence and oppressed workers. Sounds like the contents page from a Marcuse book. In fact, it’s a short list of topics inveighed against in Mike Daisey’s (in)famous philippic, The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. The show takes the form of a monologue, inspired by (with emphasis on ‘inspired by’) Daisey’s trip to Apple factories in China. Grant O’Rourke delivers the piece zealously with humour, charisma and a good deal of underlying rage. He guides the audience’s emotions from joy, to anger, to sorrow, right back to anger with precision, giving the material the necessary moral wallop. And the content is shocking; if it ever needed proving that China is not a communist country but a totalitarian, capitalist state, this is it.
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