Neighbourhood Forum @ Pearce Institute, Govan

Gary Gardiner and Murray Wason are both performers of integrity and charisma: Neighbourhood Forum, however, is designed to put them at the service of the audience, providing interludes and guidance to a series of discussions. Breaking the audience into groups, the format follows the break-out sessions of the workshop, with each session offering opportunities to discuss personal experiences of faceless bureaucracy.

Wason and Gardiner have, of course, built this format and present a splendid dance of frustration to illustrate the theme. They also put on a video of Govan in the olden days, which might have evoked the good old days of community or financial hardship, but comes across as a tokenistic gesture towards the venue and the local community.

However, the meat of the production does build a sense of community, first of all in the smaller groups and then, when Gardson (tm) do their dance, through the whole room. The room fills with frustration, anger - and a feeling that battling bureaucracy is a shared misery. The hints of triumph notwithstanding, the tone is sombre: the faceless machinery of banking and taxation have cost real people, in money and time and hope.

Smashing up the expected format of theatre - Gardson act little, and allow the audience to provide much of the content - gets closer to the intentions of the evening. People feel part of something bigger - a group of victims, maybe, and the suggestion by Wason that debt evolves into depression is felt, not just expressed. Resistance is encouraged, simply by the foregrounding of community and Neighbourhood Forum  is deceptively profound. Through a few easy steps, Gardson evoke the horror of being human in a world governed by mechanical formula, yet point towards the ways of escaping.