MONEY the Game Show

Synopsis

Casino and Queenie used to be hedge fund managers. Before the financial crisis of 2008, that is. Now, in an inspired - or desperate - career move, they've turned to performance art to share their stories of how to make (and lose) billions from economic downturn. Playing with £10,000 in real pound coins, you are invited to bet long, short and hedge, as game show hosts Casino and Queenie challenge you to play a series of high stake games that demonstrate how the world's economic system came to the brink of collapse. So, risk takers to the front, risk adverse to the back. Welcome to MONEY the game show.

Our Review:

Theo Bosanquet - 7 February 2013

This show from Clare Duffy, which first appeared at The Arches in Glasgow in 2011, is a difficult beast to categorise.

As the title suggest, it's largely a game show that sees the audience split into two teams, but the games are intertwined with an agitprop tale of banking woe, as our hosts Queenie and Casino - played by Lucy Ellinson and Brian Ferguson - tell the story of the 2008/09 collapse.

The twist is that, depending on whose team wins the game, the losing host ends up as the ultimate victim of the crash, while the show's overall message is neatly surmised by the victor: "Money is part of who we are... We can make it better."

The central coup de theatre is the presence on stage of £10,000 in real pound coins - a surprisingly small mound - which are literally shovelled into suitcases by competing volunteers from each team during a series of challenges. The atmosphere sits somewhere between The Generation Game and Tak...