Theatre review: Money, Shunt Collective, Bermondsey St, London, 12th March 2010

For this show, the Shunt Collective has created a vast and highly original set in a warehouse near its Bermondsey Street headquarters. From the outside, it looks vaguely industrial, some huge metal machine with ladders and walkways around the outside. Then, the audience are led through a door and into the interior. They move through a series of rooms and different levels, where the action of the play takes place above, below and all around. The surprises of each different section of the structure and how it is revealed give the piece part of its impact, so I won’t give too many details, but suffice to say that it is about as far as you can get from a traditional proscenium arch theatre.


The reviews that I had read led me to believe that there was no plot whatsoever, but this isn’t strictly true. It is certainly sparse in detail, the dialogue is often absurd and elliptical and there isn’t a conventional narrative. But the play is based on Emile Zola’s novel L’Argent, which was about a real life banking crash in nineteenth century France, and with this in mind it is easy to see the machine as representative of a financial institution. Early on, a man tries to gain entry into a Kafkaesque bureaucratic organisation. Later, the same character, now a big success, reels off meaningless but ever increasing numbers to show how his unspecified enterprise is growing. Another character tells a story about a man who was desperate to buy shares in “this”, she says, with a wave of the arm that takes in the whole set without explaining what it is that is so valuable.

The machine is an apt metaphor for a bloated financial institution – a vast, incomprehensible structure, whose function is unclear, but whose vital importance is never questioned by those who rush around it, endlessly tending to its hissing, groaning pipes and gears. As the numbers on the screens shoot up, it seems ever more unlikely that the structure can take the strain.

In the end, this show is all about the spectacle. Being at the centre of the action is a successful technique because it is so immersive. Every little detail of the set produces satisfying ‘ooo’s of wonder as it is revealed. The sights and sounds and surprises produce a genuine reaction from the audience. It doesn’t play on the emotions in the way that a character-driven drama might, but it provides an intense sensory experience that never allows you to stay a step removed.