We went to see Gasping, by Ben Elton, last night. It was presented by the amateur Dubai Drama Group at the Dubai Community Theatre and Arts Centre in the Mall of the Emirates.
I was unfamiliar with the play - an amusing but hard biting satire on corporate greed and the global detriment it ultimately causes - but thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a four hander: the cynical business magnate; his two rival ambitious and fawning minions, one of whom eventually sees the error of his ways, and the media manipulator sex siren, who comes to believe in her own hype. The parts were very well played by an international cast, who got a lot of laughs and got the point across well.
The story is about finding "the new pot noodle" - creating a completely new market and thus making money where none was to be had before, rather than shifting it between existing markets. The idea they come up with is "designer air" "other people's air really gets up your nose". Unfortunately it involves sucking up oxygen in order to purify it, and all too soon people are having to pay to breathe. Those who can't afford to buy their air, can only breathe the much depleted natural stuff, with most of its ogygen sucked out of it and are dying of asphyxiation....
Interestingly, possibly because this was an amateur production, the set was very old fashioned - not much play with lighting, but full flats and real furniture with lots of detailing in props, which all had to be changed between scenes by a large team of shifters. I thought this was all unnecessary - theatre goers are used to sparser indications of setting nowadays - and to my mind it held up the action too much, especially in the second half when the scenes were shorter. It sometimes seemed the changes were longer than the scene and very distracting.
However, overall a good way to spend an evening.
