There’s no doubt that this year and next will shape our future. While we can see the transformation of private industry dominance and increased commercial monopolisation unfolding, it won’t be for years, possibly decades, that the true damage of these measures will be exposed. So Bedlam’s part in Theatre Uncut, a day of nationwide theatrical action, is a political event which needs to catalyse future debates and protests.

The day-long project brought seven plays from acclaimed playwrights including Mark Ravenhill and Lucy Kirkwood. Laura Lomas’s Open Heart Surgery, slickly executed by director John Rushton, sees a young man (society) recovering from surgery (the cuts) leaving his partner distraught (the public). While this short play suggests the government’s plans have already caused the damage, Clara Brennan’s Hi Vis projects a post-cuts society where the delayed effects have divided families. With an emotional performance, Sarah McGuiness plays a mother who, after placing her disabled daughter into care, explains all the things she must fight to save in order to support her. She personifies the long haul; the “who will fight if we don’t” era; a feeling echoed in Mark Ravenhill’s A Bigger Banner. As a young couple in post-war Britain dream of democracy and social freedom, Ravenhill flashes forward to today to smash the once-held belief in a system which was always designed to fail.

The performances all flourish in their simplicity. Tash Frost keeps it simple in Jack Thorne’s Whiff Whaff, where an upper-class couple explain the illnesses befallen on their pets (but how these ailments are “issues”, not “problems”). As it demonstrates how the government have attempted to mask the cuts as necessary evils, Lucy Kirkwood’s Housekeeping satirises the “how far will they go” extreme, where accountants and bankers conspire to sell-off parts of the ocean in an attempt to reduce the debt. In a dark commentary, director George Ransley choreographs slow and calculated movements to depict uneasiness; that level of menace clashed with panic and fear. This dread is held onto in Dennis Kelly’s Things That Make No Sense, as a young man is stitched up by police for a crime he didn’t commit (perhaps a punishment the entire working world shares after the bailout of the banks?) And we’re left educated by Anders Lustgarten’s The Fat Man, a play which explains how our bailout money was returned and invested right back into the good old banks.

Even though the day suffered from periods of stagnation during the lengthy breaks between performances, it’s a decent starting point for a greater examination of our economic climate. And with a closing debate on theatre’s position in politics, optimism can be taken from a country beginning to direct, channel and vent its anger.