Theatre review: LIES

Sometimes two very different theatre productions unintentionally enrich each other. In the case of the National Theatre’s very Jewish hit, The Lehman Trilogy, and this fascinating, though oddly un-theatrical piece of theatre from Belgian group Ontroerend Goed, each has a strength where the other has a weakness.

While the former brilliantly dramatises the lives of the Jewish immigrant bothers who formed one of the biggest corporations in banking history, it does very little to actually explain how and why the bank failed, triggering the biggest financial crisis since the Wall Street Crash.

Equally, while LIES achieves the impossible by leaving financial market ignoramuses like me with an understanding of how money is made and lost, it is about the most impersonal piece of theatre it is possible to imagine.

The Almeida’s auditorium has been turned into what looks and feels like a casino with ten blackjack tables, each with seven stools. However, a croupier-like figure informs the sitters that each of us is not a gambler but a bank and each table is, in fact, a market.

Take some cash, because for every pound you put in an envelope (it’s all returned to you at the end) you get back a chip worth a million. This is your trading balance. The odds for each investment, made with the roll of a dice, are in your favour.

We are, after all, investing in sensible, tangible things such as materials and agriculture. Throwing anything from a three to a six is a win. But the game changer comes when we start taking bigger risks for higher profits. Each market issues its own government bonds, and in this way we each become exposed to the wealth or otherwise of the other markets.

There is an air of cool efficiency as this show’s young cast — all dressed in black — guide us through the regulations and rules. And there is even a gong — like Wall Street’s bell — to get us all going.

Of course, it all has to end badly otherwise we would be leaving with the message that untrammelled capitalism is a good thing. In that sense the narrative of this show is utterly predictable. But it is still an incredibly clever and involving piece of work that pushes the definition of what theatre can be.

The trading system shows its cracks when the risks and returns become unsustainably high. This happens when we are no longer investing in materials, or services, but money itself, as if we are part of some great, self-cannibalising beast.

It turns out that investing in money is a completely made up thing whose investments don’t actually result in anything useful being invested in. In The Lehman Trilogy this distorting effect is captured in the way it makes the people who profit and lose in this game less human.

But while that show focused on some of the people behind the faceless, glass towers in the City and Wall Street, this one reveals how they can all so easily come crashing down.