From the moment you step through the doors of the N16’s rather wonderful theatre (now, perhaps confusingly, in SW12) you might be forgiven for assuming you are about to be treated, or patronised even, with a show more suited to those citizens under the age of ten but once the lights dim, with a plastic cup of punch, a packet of love-hearts in your hand, and surrounded by a multitude of combusting balloons, things begin to change.With the help of some pretty eerie music and even eerier costumes, the aptly named Balloons Theatre, consisting of Joshua Webb, Bryony Cole, Emily Sitch, Nastazja Somers and Brent Jess McNeil take us somewhere very different.
Devised over six months, and changing nightly, this is performance rather than theatre at its darkest and most surreal. Coming across like a cross between the vindictive school bully and A Clockwork Orange’s Alex, the Clown leads Blue, Red, Green and Yellow through increasingly uncomfortable games. This is no child’s play, although the imagery and underlying subversive nature puts you in mind of certain adolescent traits, and it is sometimes not for the faint hearted (those of a nervous bent might need warning of the sporadically popping balloons). But it is never less than enthralling.
This is a solid, fascinating and promising start
Very much in their infancy, and benefiting from some enviable enthusiasm and expansive imaginations, The Rules of Inflation, might benefit from an experienced director’s eye, who might suggest that some of the political jibes might be slightly out of place, and even that a new, more apt title might better serve the production, but this is a solid, fascinating and promising start, though arguably not as subversive as they may well want it to be.
Word on the street is that the show will be coming to London sometime in 2017.