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Purni Morell continues her streak of bold, canny programming at the Unicorn with a well-timed blast from ever-playful Belgian provocateurs Ontroerend Goed. The set for ‘Fight Night’ looks a bit like a boxing ring: a white square with a microphone hanging from the ceiling. Five candidates arrive hooded and robed like boxers too, but they’re using words to fight for our vote. Each audience member is armed with an electronic pad with which we can vote over the course of several rounds. Ding-ding, and we’re off.
Our early decisions are based on little but the candidates’ looks and soundbites, but the process quickly escalates, the voting process becomes more knotty and complicated, the game murkier. It’s a truly fascinating experiment. It makes you alert to the contrivance and manipulation of the system, the strategies the candidates are employing; and yet, at the same time, you feel utterly invested in the outcome, even as the issues being voted on take a turn for the unsettling. Would you vote for a man who once punched a dog?
While ‘Fight Night’ feels a bit glib at times, as Ontroerend Goed’s work sometimes can, the questions it raises are vital ones. Increasingly we are invited to break the system from the inside, to opt out, to occupy. But the validity of this is also unpicked. The capable cast, led by host Angelo Tijssens, play on our perceptions; and the production as a whole makes you acutely aware of what it means to have a voice. The whole concept of choice, and how much anyone actually has, is flayed and laid open. You feel uneasy about playing the game, but you play it anyway.