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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Mark Fisher

Tipping Point

It's just like the old days. We're in a room where the blinds can scarcely hold back the evening sunlight and the chairs are laid out in straight rows on an unraked floor. On the way in, you can sign a petition demanding the freedom to protest near the G8 summit in Gleneagles, and in the interval you can help yourself to fair trade snacks.

In the spirit of socialist camaraderie, 7:84 Theatre Company has invited the community company from the Citizens' Theatre to perform a curtain raiser: The Golfians' Dilemma, a quirky political fantasy by Martin Travers about a future in which the whole of the UK is dedicated to keeping the boss class in nine irons. And the evening ends with a discussion with the local Scottish Green Party MP.

If the mood is defiantly old Labour, the preoccupations are wholly of today. Following last year's Private Agenda, a more angry piece of documentary theatre about the iniquities of the government's public-private partnership schemes, Tipping Point is 7:84's response to the G8 summit. Pieced together by writer Davey Anderson, it's a compilation of verbatim interviews with activists concerned about relieving global poverty.

In line with Bob Geldof's philosophy that the small actions of individuals can precipitate change on an international scale, Tipping Point focuses on the experiences of ordinary people, such as the woman from Glasgow's Easterhouse whose complaint to the council about her damp flat led her to make the link between "our sick houses, our sick children and the sickness of the planet".

Unlike the old days, these are not the politics of confrontation. Actors Paul Cunningham and Tom Freeman get laughs for their impersonations of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, but they don't suggest that the leaders are ignoring the problem. If there is an enemy, it's in a complacent bureaucracy that favours big business over people and it's surely this insidious institutional opponent that will provide the toughest political fight to come.

· On tour until July 3. Details: 0141-334 6686.

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