The tables are turned on the audience in £¥€$ LIES. Photo: Thomas Dhanens

THE moment you are ushered to a casino table with five other audience members, it’s clear that this isn’t going to be a show of the sit-back-and-take-it-in variety.

At each of the 10 tables a fast-talking croupier/hedge fund manager hands us our chips and explains the rules of the “game”, which change and evolve as the risks get higher and investments move from solid ones such as steel to the increasingly “exciting” but opaque ones such as finance.

Throughout, Belgian immersive theatre company Ontroerend Goed steer the players through a sequence of decisions and events that heavily echo the financial crisis of 2008. Directed by Alexander Devriendt, £¥€$ (LIES) touches territory of films like Adam McKay’s The Big Short, drawing the audience into an increasingly complex world of asset bubbles, high-risk loans and credit default swaps.

But in this play written by Joeri Smet, Angelo Tijssens, Karolien De Bleser and Devriendt, the audience is at the tables, trying to make sense of / come out ahead in a game that becomes increasingly frenetic.

The 13-strong cast skilfully steer the events towards a crash and a bank bailout, but what is a bonus in this fully immersive production is the fact that in yourself and fellow audience members you encounter all of our tendencies and frailties that come into play – and were played – when from a starting point of £10 million the wealth of your table booms and then hits the bust that was coming all along.

UNTIL AUGUST 18
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