Showing @ St George’s West until Aug 28 @ 22:55 1hr 5mins
It’s been a big week for the Big Society. In a land far far removed from the Edinburgh Festival bubble, riots have clinched London for a third night. This morning, everyone’s clubbing together to clean up. Times of hardship really do bring us closer together. Ontroerend Goed’s Audience uses, manipulates, observes and ignites the sense of being part of a collective, protesting and submitting and turns the focus to the spectators in a multimedia exploration of the actor-audience relationship. And, there’s pyros.
If it sounds a little crazy, then we’re on the right lines. In a raised seating bank, the audience face a bare stage and a huge projection screen. A camera man stands centre stage and the auditorium lights stay up. As music fans, theatregoers, voyeurs, and as individuals we’re examined and affected.
Invasive, perverse, provocative and confrontational; Audience is relentless and ruthless. Doubtless, this show will divide the audience: people won’t like it, but it’s not necessarily there to be liked. It’s an anthropological extravaganza and makes for an aggressive post-show dissection. The piece is uninhibited, will probably make you uncomfortable and almost certainly will deter non-theatregoers; perhaps the most ambitious point being when one of the cast attempts to humiliate an audience member and the remaining spectators are forced to intervene. Ontroerend Goed have previously won Fringe First awards for The Smile Off Your Face and Once and For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who You Are So Shut Up And Listen, but this seems to be more radical and abrasive than either of those. It’s timely and topical, pushes tolerance and social acceptability to their limits. How – and why – do we react as we do? Is it possible for us to think for ourselves? The performance is intricately designed to instigate more questions than it answers. You may not enjoy it, but I’m not sure you’ll regret it either.
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