Ben Fincher and Joshua Woodall talk about last nights performance of Money: The Gameshow at Wes Yorkshire Playhouse …
Ben: So, Joshua, Money: The Game Show … What did you think overall?
Joshua: I thought the show overall was fantastic. Thoroughly engaging and I just thought it was a great night out.
Ben: I think you’re right. It’s certainly unlike anything else that I’ve seen.
Joshua: Yeah. The audience participation was a real surprise for me. I knew there was going to be a level of it but I didn’t realize it was going to be dealt with as it was.
Ben: I was somewhat dreading it to be honest.
Joshua: I’m with you on that. In fact I remember beforehand that we were both nervous about it.
Ben: I think that the reason that the audience participation element worked so well is because the show really did – at least to begin with – feel like being on a real TV game show set.
Joshua: It was like It’s a Knockout meets theatre! For me it had an underlying scary feel to it though. It almost began to feel like we were being brainwashed by a cult with the audience instinctively and suddenly clapping and cheering each time the music started to play and the lights began flashing. It was reminiscent of the scenes in Requiem for a Dream where the dosed-up mother is watching a TV infomercial.
Ben: I think it was integral to the message of the play that we did get a sense of the frivolity and ‘unreality’ behind the movement of the large sums of cash, both the £10,000 on stage as well as the millions of which the ex-hedge fund manager characters spoke in the more conventionally play-like parts of the show.
Joshua: It was interesting how the interaction with the money changed throughout the performance as the audience’s perception changed. As we entered the theatre, £10,000 in £1 coins was on the stage guarded by a member of security personnel, and a couple of people were invited up to see for themselves that it was real. They behaved was as if it was a precious metal and they were certainly in awe of the amount. As the game progressed and the coins began to change hands owing to the gambling, the money seemed to lose its value and became almost farcical as it was scooped up using a child’s bucket and spade and thrown around.
Ben: For the benefit of the readers I’ll explain that we were divided up as an audience into two halves before the play actually started in earnest, and if you’ll remember we were immediately told of what I think was one of the core ideas behind the show: that the value of money is a sort of collective faith, that it doesn’t have any actual tangible value. To some degree I think that the play could be interpreted as a criticism solely of fiat currency. As you touched on, I think that as the contest progressed the coins seemed less like money and more like arbitrary tokens on some kind of game show.
Joshua: Yes, and it was interesting to see how readily our team was ready to gamble everything we had when we were losing in the hope of clawing back our previous losses as we had no attachment to the money, drawing an obvious parallel to the hedge fund gamblers.
Ben: Would you say that perhaps the play was a little bit blatant in its message?
Joshua: Maybe. And towards the end during the soliloquies there were a few minutes where it almost felt a little like I was back in secondary school and a touring company had come to teach me about the economy ‘in a fun and funky way’. I definitely don’t want to sound mean because I enjoyed it.
Ben: I can see where you’re coming from, and I think without the game show framework it wouldn’t have been anything like as strong a production as it was, but I disagree really. I think that both performances were very good and the hedge fund manager backstory was really well integrated as a part of the piece.
Joshua: I don’t want anyone to misunderstand my previous point. I thoroughly enjoyed the production, and with the exception of the part I just mentioned, I was engrossed in the story and I thought that it was woven well into the game show aspect.
Ben: Do you think you had more, if any, sympathy with the people who lost millions gambling with other people’s money in the real 2008 financial crisis after the show? Do you think that the play was trying to evoke that?
Joshua: I agree that you could take the view that the play showed that anyone can get carried away with gambling and you may take that as harbouring a sympathetic message for the hedge fund managers but I certainly didn’t leave the play with more sympathy for them.
Ben: I think I would argue that by illustrating how easy it is to gamble everything away, particularly when for one reason or another the money and its tangible impact is hidden, the play sought to expose the vulnerabilities inherent in the system, ‘the system’ being one of several things really. You could argue that fiat currency is the problem, or globalized stock market trading, or capitalism as a whole.
Joshua: Despite drawing conclusions between the hedge fund gambling and our own as the audience, we mustn’t forget the question of morality and responsibility though. A point I think which was raised towards the end of the production.
Ben: Come to think of it, it’s interesting how the audience’s frivolity with the money cloaks that for many people in the audience, myself included, that £10,000 would be a life-changing sum.
Joshua: Yeah, as I mentioned, this was illustrated by the change in the way people physically handled the money throughout the production. Speaking of audience participation, I thought it was fantastic. I’d never been to anything similar and wasn’t prepared for how involved the audience would become, especially one middle-aged woman in our team who seemed to have been enjoying the bar before the performance. Her cheating and sabotage evoked great cheers from our team and outrage from our opponents. I thought that was great.
Ben: It was a pleasant surprise in as much as it really hammered home the lengths to which people will go to win. Even though the cheat knew she wouldn’t be receiving any of the money, she still felt it was worth it to essentially make an arse of herself in front of a couple of hundred people in the vain hope that it might steer our team towards this nebulous concept of victory. One has to wonder if the hedge fund managers that inspired the piece are similarly motivated not necessarily by greed but by the urge to win, the urge to be vindicated in their predictions of market behaviour. Also possibly booze.
Joshua: What did you think of the production design?
Ben: I though it was surprisingly effective. It’s clear that they didn’t have a ton of money to throw at it, but though quite minimal it still did what it needed to and created that game show atmosphere. It was quite versatile too and helped illustrate in a very simple way principles like a rising lift. I don’t know if you noticed but the towers of lights resembled skyscrapers, to me at least.
Joshua: Yeah, they reminded me of the Twin Towers and Canary Wharf. There wasn’t actually a lot on stage, but it all worked brilliantly and it didn’t feel sparse.
Ben: So to wrap up, what criticisms do you have of the play?
Joshua: My only criticism is, as mentioned, that I did feel like at one point they were trying to hammer home a simplified message in what seemed like a bit of a patronizing way.
Ben: I can understand why you’d feel that way, but I think patronization requires the belief that one has the answers and one’s audience does not. I don’t think that the writer and the performers do believe that they have the answers. And I think that the open-endedness of the play was one of the things it did right. It certainly could have been patronizing if the message was ‘to create a global utopia we need to do X, Y and Z’. But I think it approaches its subject matter more as aspiring to be food for thought.
Joshua: No, sorry, I didn’t feel patronized in that sense and I certainly agree that the play didn’t attempt to offer any answers to the current crisis, but it was the way that they explained the financial crisis in such a simplified manner during one section that seemed patronizing to me.
Ben: I think it’s important to remember the context though. This is, fundamentally, a piece of entertainment. It’s not Das Kapital on stage. Maybe it was slightly reductionist in the portrayal of the crisis, but I don’t think it was to the piece’s detriment. I don’t think the fundamental ideas of the play were lost or distorted. I suppose the part you’re talking about was ‘insurance’ so to speak so that the play could continue on the basis that the audience knew the bare minimum they that they had been told.
Joshua: Agreed. But it still felt like ‘stop the production, we need to cover this ground.’
Ben: So given that there was a definite didactic element in the play, do you feel like your perspective on the issues it covered have changed? And is that entertainment?
Joshua: No, I’m not sure that I would say I came away from this performance with a changed attitude, but it certainly made me explore my thoughts on an old issue in new ways, and most importantly in interesting and fun ways so I definitely think this is entertainment, although it transpired to be entertaining in a far different way than I was expecting, and is different from how I believe most people perceive plays to be.
Ben: I definitely found it entertaining, but I’m already a very political person so I’m not sure I could honestly say that I radically reconsidered my position on the morality (or lack thereof) of hedge funds and the other shady practices that precipitated the financial crisis. I felt like my opinions were reinforced by the play really, which is always a nice feeling. I appreciated the parallels drawn between these two kinds of gambling though, which on the surface seem very different but actually both tap into very human, perhaps even primal instincts, our desire to feel justified in our actions, and what I guess could call submissiveness – this unquestioning faith that money has value that exists beyond consensus. I think that these are I suppose the morals of the story.
Joshua: I think that the true morals of the story are that more people can lick their elbow than you might expect and that it’s possibly a bad idea to ask someone to recite Russian poetry during your production. A must see for any Champagne Socialist or self respecting Grauniad reader. It’s only on till tomorrow.