Funny and absurd satire on crypto currency and Christmas but too disconnected to really explore its themes in great depth.
A Very Crypto Christmas (AVCC) opens the audience with a question you have likely never heard before: Are Christmas and cryptocurrency about the same things at their heart? This sets up the audience for what we could all feel would be an eccentric, energetic and somewhat baffling piece of performance theatre. Typically an empty stage filled with just two people either results in heavy drama or absurdist shenanigans, and you this piece falls into the latter category with ease.
We are presented with the setting of two bumbling partners giving a pseudo business conference/sales pitch hoping to persuade us on the wonderful value of crypto currency. This sets the audience up for what seemingly will be a satire of both crypto currencies and other such cons sold to you by overly confident men on stages with careful rehearsed routines. However, this is where the piece strikes its first hurdle – while the hook and premise of the show is interesting, the pacing in the first 15-20 minutes is far too slow and full of exposition that doesn’t pay off for the time invested.
It attempts to introduce the relationship between these two business partners, Andrew Simpson as Warren, the straight man desperately trying to get his pitch out, and Lewis Sherlock as Stu, the wise guy often interjecting with quips and thoughts that repeatedly derail the show. This relationship has a good setup, however, the dynamic doesn’t realise its comedic potential until a row takes place later on in the show.
As the show develops, the energy does improve – once the initial 15 minutes of slow salesperson pitch ends, the gags and physical theatre start coming out – with the audience having a part in a variety of scenes. The physical theatre in the show, especially from Lewis, is thoroughly enjoyable and delivers the absurdism the show’s pitch promised, with various slapstick jokes executed with great timing in addition to speaking his mind at the most awkward of times.
The minimalist staging really helped to accentuate the lighting that was used very well at various points to amplify the drama in the surreal and humorous scenes which really helped to bring the absurdism out which made those moments of absurdism (the ending for one) incredibly entertaining; the show’s producer Christiana Bissett successfully takes the show up a few notches just with a handful of great lighting cues at heightened moments .
The company that produced this, Adrenalism, bills itself as believing that “the best performances happen with diverse audiences in unexpected places and in unexpected ways”, and has previously performed a variety of topical interactive, very physical performance pieces both in theatres and in public. A number of these are billed as tackling or provoking thought about topical issues; in regards to AVCC they claim it satirises [the current] “nightmarish dystopia of Crypto, consumerism, artwashing and toxic masculinity”. However this claim isn’t successfully achieved in the show currently.
Despite the hilarity at various points in the show’s short runtime it struggles to stay on topic – failing to delve into either the show’s premise or satirising the issues mentioned in the show blurb. The show could commit more to satirising these aspects of modern life, and it could fully devolve into more absurdist satire of the salespeople word of cons and insane pitches: but it does neither and it really detracts from the end product especially the scenes and jokes that were well executed.
Lewis and Andrew are both actors well worth keeping an eye on in the future – as for AVCC there is a really good premise for absurd satire on the world we live in but the formula isn’t quite worked out yet.
REVIEWER: John Richardson