Your Nation Loves You

Queuing up outside the secret entrance to the tunnels last night was an experience in itself. Only last month, Bansky chose this popular graf spot to premiere his new film Exit Through the Gift Shop and the walls are still technicolour, the air thick with spray-paint. It makes the transition into the dank, mildewed interior all the more of a shock, until we find our mini-survival kits, left for us by the mysterious ‘Department of Data Protection.’

As we adjust our eyes to the light, a figure emerges. Then another. Over the next two hours, we discover there are 12 of them being held down here, though for what reason, we have no more clue than the prisoners themselves. Instead, we see the dynamics of this disparate group at play and learn the sad truth: that human nature is quite enough to make them enemies of each other, invisible captor or not.

The most powerful moments come from physical theatre – a rare flash of friendship; a tender love scene in a make-shift garden. Sadly, the points of tension in the script are more heavy-handed and thanks to an undeveloped plot, it all begins to feel more like a rather harsh summer in the Big Brother house. In the cold and discomfort, it’s impossible not to empathise with these characters. But just getting us down here is not enough.