Trade

Responsibility has gone out of fashion. Too many of us aspire to be victims.

And the truly marginalized? Perhaps we can pretend the competition is good for them.

Because unbridled capitalism is good, isn’t it? (It’s like a synonym for democracy, right?)

In Trade we follow the fortunes of a dodgy investment company. Manipulate the share price and buy or sell at the right time. And, when one deal goes spectacularly wrong and squillions are lost, it’s time to point the finger. Who is responsible? The fund manager has a golden parachute (literally and hilariously.) Sure, she does time… white collar time. In the meantime, the rest of her team reinvent themselves. Capitalism can be ethical, can’t it?  Greed is Good, that’s from the Sermon on the Mount, isn’t it?

Devised by the ensemble (Melissa Hume, Mathias Olofsson, Dymphna Carew, Alison Bennett and Alicia Gonzalez) and with words by Melissa Lee Speyer, this is sharp, very entertaining theatre.

Director Alison Bennett and movement director Dymphna Carew create a visual space that’s fun and fluid, evocative of a world where funds slip away, ethics slip away. “No risk. No reward.”

Performances are both precise and playful. Trade is very funny.

And wonderfully pointy. Just when you’re comfortably smug in your superiority to these coke-addicted high-flyers, you’re reminded: where, exactly, does your interest, your superannuation, come from?

There was a time when the question was not Who am I? but What is to be done? Exciting, vibrant and new, theatre like this takes me back, and can take us all forward.

Paul Gilchrist

 

Trade by Hurrah Hurrah

at the Old 505 Theatre until 15 April

tix and info here