Sebastian, a Chilean, was arrested and tortured by the Pinochet regime but has survived to tell the tale. Rose is a Canadian he meets on a bridge one evening. She appears to be about to jump so he intervenes. Rose can remember almost nothing of her early life, and Sebastian understands enough about trauma to recognise the symptoms. He knows that the teenage Rose was a student at Montreal’s McGill University, where she had received treatment for anxiety, so when he finds a newspaper article about Dr Ewen Cameron, a McGill psychiatrist whose brainwashing techniques were deemed so successful by the CIA that they funded him, he thinks he might have found the source of Rose’s memory loss.
Inspired by Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine, about how the free market thrives on instability and exploits crises to make populations more malleable and unquestioning, this latest show from fringe favourites Dumbshow is an ambitious piece of political theatre. It uses a gripping, thriller-like framework to tell Rose’s personal story, but also connects it to 9/11, the war in Iraq, even the closure of libraries in the UK. It makes the suggestion that the government’s austerity measures are a clever piece of neo-liberal opportunism imposed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, which had left people confused, anxious and compliant. So compliant, in fact, that they voted the Conservatives back into power.
This is a passionate and heartfelt show and a very watchable one, despite a scrappy design and some so-so performances. But it doesn’t always find the dramatic architecture to support the ideas. It can come across as overly tub-thumping; reliant on exposition rather than character and narrative. Always thoughtful, but never quite thrillingly theatrical.
- At Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, until 30 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000.
