[Bennyd_89]

I wanted to see this but i'm a bit strapped for cash at the moment. If anyone's seen it, is it woth spending what little money i have to see this production?

[Backdrifter]

I'm a sucker for site-specific things and have seen plays in vaults, a station, a toilet, abandoned offices, one or two other odd locations. I reckon maybe half the time at most you end up with something good once you get past the buzz of the unusual setting. This one is in the wrong half! It's just not enough to set up an interesting scenario with the remote viewing & listening; you have to have something good to pin it to. This just came across as messing about, some repetition, and apparent randomness. For 80 minutes.

Last year I saw Back to Back's production Small Metal Objects, staged at Stratford Station, which had a similar physical set-up - audience on a mezzanine above the station, listening through headphones to the dialogue. But that worked really well, and there was a sense of movement that I didn't get from Contains Violence.

If you're going, try doing what I did and use the binoculars to scan not just the offices but the street and the pub over the road. It was the only glimmer I got of something tangible, the notion that while life goes on you don't know what might be happening in the anonymous office block. There was a lovely brunette having a drink in the Hop Poles and I felt slightly scuzzy for spying on her but apart from the boredom I felt at the production itself, that was the only kind of feeling I experienced all evening. A real wasted opportunity - so much more they could have done with it.