Review: Lies, Almeida Theatre ★★★★★

You’re in the richest 1% and invited to gamble on the financial stability of the global economy. You're seated in darkness at a curved spotlit gaming table, with six others and a croupier. Your table represents a country and you’re each in charge of a Bank. For just three weeks, the Almeida’s stage has been transformed into an international stock market for this bold immersive show from world-renowned Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed.

You adopt the role of trader, in an adrenaline-fuelled game of risk. Stakes start small, but as the minutes tick by the millions bet, won and lost stack up and up. The market starts ‘flooded with optimism’, but greed is an evil beast. As the bubble balloons with the roll of die, international trading becomes frenzied. The thirteen black-clad croupiers-cum-dealers manically run between tables to try and salvage the crumbling economy: more money is printed and high risk is rewarded with high return. But all too quickly bonds become worthless. Loans spiral out of control. The global market hurtles towards a crash behind your back. Your country relies on you. Do you borrow? Do you resist the chase?

Exploring the banking crisis from prosperity to crash, this show is a thought-provoking and fully interactive experience that offers you the chance to take control. But we soon learn that if one goes down, we all go down. The production, resembling more of a game than a theatrical performance, is slick and investing options are well explained (at manageable intervals) by the dab-hand croupiers. It's an innovative take on a well writ story, but inevitable predictability inhibits any element of surprise. With the basics grasped, a little more theatrical intervention wouldn’t have gone amiss.

That said it’s a marvelously fun and insightful evening out. Prepare for sweaty palms and a racing heart. The odds are in your favour. But will the power go to your head?