‘Play’ is a misnomer for this monologue, a hybrid of storytelling and reality theatre. It’s full of questions on which the audience votes using smart gadgets, but these don’t include the most important question – ‘what’s it doing in the National Theatre at twice the price of the fringe, where it belongs?’ That question costs 50p per minute.
Rob Drummond’s examination of democracy starts by establishing the demographic in the room; well, after agreeing on the latecomers policy. To my shock, it was 50% male, 90% white, with the same proportion considering themselves liberal, something they go on to disprove. We later reveal we are 90% Remain. All of this is such a surprise for an NT audience!
In between telling his story, mostly about his encounter and relationship with an activist called Eric, we vote on a lot of propositions, mostly to do with how we’d react to saving or killing people to avoid other deaths, by train. His point seems to be that we’ve become intolerant of differing opinions.
As a performer, he’s quite engaging. I don’t know if Eric is real (seems implausible to me) but if he is, Drummond’s pursuit of him is unhealthy. It’s fitfully engaging, but there’s a lot of time used up with the voting process and the results, though these aren’t really discussed, and in the end I didn’t think it was particularly insightful or revealing.
This is my first experience of Drummond’s work and I left puzzled as to why he has so many major theatrical institutions in his thrall, but then again I had just returned from Edinburgh where you have to work hard in a competitive environment and where this would have cost less than half as much and probably been showered with three star reviews. Come to think of it, that’s what it got here……
Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog 
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