BWW Reviews: PRICE OF MONEY, Albany Theatre, September 17 2014

Fans of musical theatre will need no reminder that money makes the world go round, the world go round, the world go round, but, as Price of Money (at The Albany until 20 September) shows, money can make the world twist and shout too.

This Belarus Free Theatre and Falmouth University (Amata) co-production is an extraordinary, outrageous, shocking reflection on where we are right now and how we got here, drawing on Aristophanes' Plutus and Get Outraged!, 93-year-old Stephane Hessel's cri-de-coeur that inspired the transnational Occupy Movement. There's plenty of Brecht in there too, a touch of Berkoff and, maybe, just a little Ionescu.

Stories are told in self-contained scenes, each explaining (and explained by) the global crisis of capitalism that has, characteristically, affected the biggest capitalists the least (it's not called a plutocracy for nothing). Each of the extraordinarily talented company sing, dance, clown and cavort and seem able to play any musical instrument that comes to hand - and skip like Malcolm McLaren's Ebonettes! It makes for a dizzying impressionistic mosaic that, performed all-through, makes its demands on the audience for the undoubted rewards it bestows. Speech also switched from English to Belarusian (surtitled) at the blinking of an eye - one might say, as swiftly as capital is transferred from one country's elite to another.

Though the call to action that closes the production is heartfelt and justified, I felt that Ayn Rand's brilliant defence of money in Atlas Shrugged was worth a slot in the historical overview - even if it doesn't fit the agenda. Perhaps more pertinently, Christopher Hitchens' pithy response to the persistence of poverty - that if women are properly empowered, particularly in terms of their fertility, poverty diminishes very quickly - was not addressed in a politics that felt more 1960s than 2010s. Despite many female roles - beautifully, aggressively, wittily delivered - the metaphorical whiff of testosterone hung heavy in the air: finance was portrayed as a boys' game to be transformed by other boys' games.

There's more to come from this company (now in a long term relationship with The Albany) with scope to retain the passion and add the nuance. I'll look forward to seeing how things develop.

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