Does My Society Look Big in This? (Bristol)

Writer Stephen Brown, director Tom Morris and the Old Vic’s Wild Oats company have developed a piece of event-theatre with exciting potential. Billed at the top of the show as “an experiment”, it’s a magazine-style entertainment on the theme of political engagement.

The company involves the audience in a mosaic of top-whack satirical songs, verbatim vignettes from the streets of Bristol, panto-style pokes at theatre (the Old Vic’s refurbishment and the industry itself) and the chance for the audience to elect a theatre mayor for the night who gets to spend “our” pot of cash on an elected project.

The night’s strongest theatrical moments are without doubt the wit of the songs (a love song to the tax man and Theatre as the fifth emergency service for “our souls” - spot the pun); the weakest, the under-developed UWE academic and narrative of baby-boomer cynicism, guilt and worry.

But theatrical dexterity aside, something else happens here. The panto-feel that comes from rough edges and impro, a company enjoying itself, audience involvement and local in-jokes generates a genuine warmth and chattiness between strangers in the audience and an excitement in the room.

As Morris implies at the outset, they’re taking a risk, but it’s one that could have a long-lasting pay-off if they want to develop it further: both for the disparate communities of Bristol, (a city just one month away from its own Mayoral election), and for the future of political theatre itself.

- by Gill Kirk