‘Breaking News’ says nothing newsworthy

One wonders what it must do to a performer’s confidence when there is a mass exodus of audience members during a show. And then one stops wondering and starts wishing one had the courage to follow suit. 14 people – yes, I was bored enough to keep count – walked out during this disappointing slice of ‘reality theatre.’

The UK Premiere of ‘Breaking News’: A ‘Daily News Show’ by experimental, Brechtian German collective Rimini Protokoll took a miserable shot at living up to the hype surrounding the intriguingly titled performance.

In a pitiful effort to sculpt this show into something resembling theatre, the uninteresting ‘play’ uses real life journalists, broadcasters and translators rather than actors to interpret and comment on the snippets of news and flickering images beamed simultaneously from all around the world.

The blurb in the Festival brochure gives a tantalising taste of what’s to come… or what one hopes is to come. It all sounded terribly illuminating.

In this digital, media-obsessed age of mass communication we are constantly bombarded by news broadcasts, chunks of information and bites of advertising, and the play’s programme professes to touch on such issues. So I was expecting a fast-paced and enlightening investigation, providing pause for thought on the constant drip-feed of news, on who decides what constitutes news. I anticipated an exploration of the reasons as to why we tend to feel cut off from the world if we don’t get our quotidian quick fix of current affairs, of drama, of Schaudenfreude (admit it!). Almost none of this materialised on stage.

‘Ironically, a show about information provides us with none of any merit’

Early on, there is the creeping feeling that it’s going to be a disappointing performance. The un-engaging opening scene, in which a group of people are all living in the same apartment block in modern-day Berlin, drags on far too long. The neighbours ramble about their viewing habits, which channels they prefer, and how they can identify their apartments from afar by their satellite dishes. My ears prick up at the brief mention of the Wall. Are they going to compare the news before and after, an interrogation of state-controlled media in the GDR, perhaps? No such luck: it’s back to the satellite dishes and the TV aerials, or some such tedium.

The performance was confusing, lifeless and monotonous and could have easily been chopped to half the length; probably even less. Had I not read the spiel in the programme it would have been hard to discern the point they were attempting to make.

There’s very little substance here. Ironically, a show about information provides us with none of any merit. Buy the aforementioned programme, read that, and save yourself some ennui.

To give them their due, a few witty lines and a couple of incisive and insightful comments on the nature of the news are fleetingly made. But these are few and far between, and don’t serve to alleviate the general impression of the whole performance blurring together into something resembling an un-absorbing documentary.