Reviews

Fight Night (Plymouth)

Karen Bussell finds the latest offering from Ontroerend Goed at the Drum Theatre manipulative but fascinating.

Fight Night - The Drum Theatre, Plymouth
Fight Night – The Drum Theatre, Plymouth

It's great to be back in the Drum after the Theatre Royal Plymouth's summer refurb. Looking good too.

And we're back with the controversial Belgian multiple Fringe First Award-winning company Ontroerend Goed (in cahoots with Australia's The Border Project, Drum Theatre Plymouth, Richard Jordan Productions and Vooruit in association with the Adelaide Festival).

Fight Night is an interesting, every-night-is-different 80 minutes in which the power is in the hands of the audience (or is it?).

Five actors reveal snippets of information about themselves and the audience anonymously votes for its favourite, with candidates leaving the stage one-by-one until the winner is announced.

More intriguingly perhaps is self-realisation: are your first impressions right; do you remain loyal regardless; just what may be a deal breaker for you and which is the lesser of three evils? Quite fascinating. And manipulative.
Sophie Cleary, Charlotte De Bruyne, Valentijn Dhaenens, David Heinrich and Roman Vaculik take differing approaches to vote-winning, with Angelo Tijssens a veritable master of ceremonies under liberal direction from Alexander Devriendt.
Well worth a look.

– Karen Bussell