BWW Reviews: GAME, Almeida Theatre, March 3 2015

Game is the latest production from Mike Bartlett, currently running at the Almeida Theatre. This immersive production splits the audience in to four different zones marked A-D, offering people the chance to gain different and unique experiences. Upon entering their designated zone, audience members are handed wireless headphones which they need to wear throughout the production. You quickly forget that there are other audience members inside the venue watching the same production.

Game is reminiscent of Big Brother - we watch a couple through the walls of their own home as they go about their daily lives. Liverpudlian couple Carly (Jodie McNee) and husband Ashley (Mike Noble) move in to a rent-free home where all of their bills and expenses are covered. There is one catch, however - they're part of a game where members of the public pay more than £500 to shoot them with tranquilliser darts (shooting at the woman costs more, but there is a special offer on Wednesdays - four shots for the price of two). They don't know when or where it will happen - it could be while they're watching television, making dinner or sitting in the hot tub. Wherever they are, they're stalked like wild animals by strangers. Although the couple are frustrated, they seem to believe their lifestyle is worth being shot at by the public every once in a while - even though their attempts to conceive a child are thwarted on a number of occasions as they're even shot at during sex. Eventually the psychological effect this has on them becomes increasingly difficult for them to mask and the public begins to find the game slightly boring.

That is until that is the couple have a son who, on his seventh birthday, becomes eligible as a target alongside his parents, with the owner hoping it will entice people in again. The couple then have to decide whether they want to continue in the game or escape which would result in them being made homeless and unemployed. Game presents a disturbing vision of a world where desperate people can be bought and ethics go out of the window. Director Sacha Wares and designer Miriam Buether have together created an innovative space, enabling audience members' unrestricted views of the set regardless of their zone. Following on from the success of King Charles III, Bartlett has once again created an innovative production designed to make people think about the future.

Photo credit: Keith Pattison