Anna Burnside reviews an ‘immaculately performed’ production that’s ‘intimate and absorbing’.
As the audience puts on its headphones, a restless man paces inside a glass box. Welcome to international banking fraud performed as immersive theatre: an anonymous tax attorney turns whistleblower on the Cum-Ex scandal which defrauded European economies out of a cool £50m.
A forensic attorney, represented by a disembodied voice and transcript on the wall of the cube, probes the insider’s involvement. How was he recruited into the scheme? Did he recruit others? Can he square his behaviour with his own conscience?
We see how money pings between tax jurisdictions with bankers following closely behind. There are meetings in sharp suits and cocaine nights in wipe-clean clubs.
Danish company Theater Katapult won a Fringe First for The Insider on its first outing, and it has lost none of its bite. In a year when one of the biggest shows - National Theatre of Scotland’s Make It Happen - also looks at bankers behaving badly, this is a perfect companion piece.
The scale is completely different - this is a one man show, immaculately performed by Christoffer Hvidberg Rønje. It’s intimate and absorbing with no karaoke and very little dancing. Yet together both pieces illuminate the personalities that move money and the myriad small decisions that, together, move markets.
Financial fraud doesn’t get much more compelling than this.
The Insider is at the Pleasance Dome (King Dome) at 13:30 until August 23, 2025.
RSS