A DISTRESSING SCENARIO
A DISTRESSING SCENARIO: a double bill by post & version 1.0 with B-Sharp, Downstairs Belvoir Street, 25 November-19 December, 2010. Part One: Everything I Know About the Global Financial Crisis in One Hour (by post). Part Two: The Market is Not Functioning Properly (by version 1.0)
THE GLOBAL financial crisis, its precursors and aftermath, are about as comprehensible – to the average person in the street and/or high-powered RBA economist – as Linear B. How good is it then, that in Part One: Everything I Know About the Global Financial Crisis in One Hour Zoe Coombs Marr, Mish Grigor and Natalie Rose went to all the trouble of getting pissed legless and devising a way of explaining the whole sorry mess in a stream of consciousness and champagne. The result is a short, sharp show that will send your average person and high-powered economist out into the night full of laughter and a whole new way of thinking about popcorn.
Of course, you only have to read Margaret Visser’s seminal Much Depends On Dinner to know that Coombs Marr, Grigor and Rose are absolutely spot on in their analysis of the central role played by corn in the American – and therefore global – economy. Nevertheless, the three women have stolen a march on the eminent social historian by also managing to pinpoint the pivotal importance of scarlet stilettos and slinky evening frocks in any interpretation of contemporary high finance and social cohesion.
Blackboards also play a crucial role in this amazing lesson in everything you ever wanted to know about Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Granny Maize, animal spirits, liquor outlets, liquidity, sub-prime steaks, rib-eye mortgages, default buttons, credit crunches and foreclosure – which is what happens to people who laugh too much for close on 45 minutes.
Interval: repair to the bar and have a glass of shampoo before returning to the theatre where the empty space has been almost filled with an elevated platform and three screens flickering with blurry and scary images of George W Bush, Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama. Time for Part Two: The Market is Not Functioning Properly.
Devised and performed by Jane Phegan and Kym Vercoe and directed by David Williams, the second half of the evening – in truth a snappy 35 minutes, or thereabouts – is a very different approach to the catastrophic state of the global economy, but ends up in pretty much the same place: f**k it, let’s dance. Phegan and Vercoe dive into the personal and political mess of credit cards, debt and first world living and illustrate just how easily the mess is got into and how much easier it is not to feel how the water is hotting up and then, how we learn to stop worrying and love the boiling water anyway. Or at least, learn how to live with a clear and justified sense of hysterical fright.
The two works are as different as sovereign debt and having a tin box under the bed, but they complement each other and work extremely well in tandem. At some point it’s likely that some will think back to David Hare’s great big boys’ play of earlier this year, The Power of Yes, and reflect on how different the same subject is from the point of view of two groups of young women. In the hands of post and version 1.0 the continuing horror story of the most recent global meltdown is personalised, brought crashing to earth and rendered irresistibly and horribly entertaining.
