Audience

Belgium’s theatrical agent provocateurs Ontroerend Goed know how to grab a headline or two. If they’re not canoodling punters and baring breasts (Internal), they’re getting febrile teens to strip, snog and dice up worms (Teenage Riot/Once and For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen).

2011’s Fringe offering, the aptly-named Audience, takes the action offstage and attempts the further dissection of us, the paying public, examining our role as passive consumers and our susceptibility to follow the herd, protect each other, speak out or just sit in complicit silence.

A camera is wheeled out and our faces are projected onto an exposing, floor-to-ceiling close-up on a huge white screen. Nervous titters and disquiet spread across the faces of those in focus. Music is played loudly. Some imbedded actors dance and we, apparently, are offered the choice of joining in. Some do, some don’t. Coats from the cloakroom are paraded in a mock fashion show; some bags are even emptied. An old couple walk out.

Despite some moments of acute discomfort—including a now infamous section when a young female is aggressively confronted and asked to uncross her legs on camera—Audience is not the morally deficient devil’s work that some have frothily declaimed. But disappointingly, despite the fascinating premise and theatrical rule-bending, nor is it that interesting either, unearthing little in its heavy-handed deconstruction of crowd mentality.

A closing video montage of intercut rallies, speeches and gatherings drives home the obvious: that groups of people behave differently from the isolated individual. Got it? Yeah. Now let’s move on.