Hope Gap
Scorch Theatre
'What's your idea of Utopia?' Writer and director Nick Warnford's vision of a future Britain is so close to home, it gives you the chills. 'Hope Gap' cleverly depicts a world where nobody can escape the self-perpetuating language and images that the pervasive media machine employs to make gambling the new form of mass entertainment. An intelligent, topical and timely script, flawlessly performed and injected with just the right dose of humour, is fused with multimedia, neon-lights and music that are bound to suck you in and stimulate you to dwell on its crux: there can't be any hope for cultural freedom if hope stands for 'Home Of Perpetual Entertainment'. Addictive. - ThreeWeeks.
Open House Public House, 2 - 10 May, times vary, £8.50 (£7.00), fringe pp 51.
tw rating 5/5
[ap]
Scorch Theatre, the company behind the 2008 Brighton Fringe award-winning (Best Actress, Latest 7 Awards) play Power Lunch by Alan Ball, returns to the Brighton Fringe in 2009 with the brand new dark comedy, HOPE GAP.
Set in the near future, HOPE GAP shows Britain emerging from a deep recession, now dependent upon gambling taxes following the proliferation of gaming and the nation’s mass addiction to it.
HOPE - the Home of Perpetual Entertainment - a 'gaming' corporporation creates ever new and inventive forms of gambling to entice new players and ensure corporate profit growth. Local Authorities bid for the most profitable COGS - Council Operated Gaming Schemes -
London ’s Millennium Dome is now a rehab centre and the gaming police are watching every move, ready for pre-emptive arrests.
The play follows
John Daniels - a washed-up famous singer, former political mascot for culture and a man pushed to the brink of self-destruction by his gambling addiction - through the eyes of an investigative journalist interested in the story of
John ’s decline, his search for understanding of both his addiction and himself, through attendances to the Gambling Awareness Programme (GAP), and his growing paranoia that the triggers to his addiction are controlled and manipulated by unseen forces… inner demons or the omnipresent heads of HOPE who will always be one step ahead of human frailty?
HOPE GAP tackles the moral responsibility of the gaming industry’s invasion of culture and dealing with issues of free-choice and exploitation, all the while retaining disturbing humour.
How will Britain manage the current recession?
Is Britain's culture changing - for the better?
You decide.