Trade

Photo by Hayden Anderson

Hurrah Hurrah present, TRADE, at The Old 505 Theatre, Elizabeth St. Newtown. 4 April-15 April.

TRADE is a work that has been in development since 2013. Hurrah Hurrah is a company led by Alison Bennett that is interested in devising its own work: "Overarchingly, we're interested in movement and the meeting of the movement and text."

This work was initially inspired by the fall of the French rogue trader Jerome Kerviel who lost 5 million pound in illegal futures trading. Who was responsible for such a thing to be able to happen? This show with a fairly lively and witty text, shaped by Melissa Lee Speyer from improvisations by the ensemble, is employing physical expertise of a high order to deliver a very pertinent communique interrogating the circumstances of the monied (crazed) powerful that facilitated such catastrophe. It goes further to intimate that this disaster simply engendered the go-to-means for the rise of the same circumstances in a new guise, for it to appear again. And, perhaps, again and again. The musical score underpinning the performance, by Maria Alfonsine, is more than apt and in its own way contributes to the humour of the exercise.

At just under an hour, Alison Bennett, Dymphna Carew, Melissa Hume, Alicia Gonzalez and, particularly, an impressive Mathias Olofsson, with meticulous skill and a huge acerbic and intelligent grasp of the world of finance cleverly illustrates those 'dark' forces and their greedy appetite at work. It has echoes of the great Scorsese film, WOLF OF WALL STREET, with the same relish of satiric gruesomeness.

Smart, physically crisp and drilled, cynically intelligent and funny, Hurrah Hurrah pulls it off. I reckon an evening of some provocation and witness to promising skills will reward you making an effort to see TRADE.