Can tales from the crypto make for effective theatre? Bitcoin Boi explored the subject through song last year, while A Very Crypto Christmas offered an absurdist take in 2022. But any suspense can feel abstract when the characters are engaged in that most un-theatrical of pursuits: squinting at screens.
In Wolves on Road, House of Ife writer Beru Tessema has the wisdom to make 21-year-old east London entrepreneurs Manny (Kieran Taylor-Ford) and Abdul (Hassan Najib) proper little Duracell bunnies. Manny lives with his mother, Fevan (Alma Eno), and is hyperactively hawking knock-off designer goods when Abdul, a “cryptovangelist”, offers him a way out. “My portfolio’s fuckin’ mooned,” he brags, and soon Manny is throwing everything at this moonshot, too. “I think your son just made £10,000,” marvels Fevan’s boyfriend Markos (Ery Nzaramba). But what goes up must come down …
In a co-production with Tamasha, director Daniel Bailey keeps the tempo high, as he did at the same venue with the superior Red Pitch, and it’s no punishment spending an evening with Taylor-Ford and Najib. They bounce around Amelia Jane Hankin’s set, where the pale pink hues are intermittently disrupted by video screens, neon and – when panic sets in – digits swarming across the floor like ants.
That uncomplicated bonhomie, however, becomes part of the play’s problem. These are decent lads whose friendship is never tested and who want nothing more than to make some coin. Where’s the conflict?
Routine intergenerational strife of the “respect your elders” variety boils up between Manny and Markos. We’re also told that parishioners lured into investing their savings are knocking angrily at the door. Danger, though, remains theoretical. There is a welcome jolt in the second act, which opens with a standup-style crypto-sermon by Devlin, a local boy made God. As played by Hamilton star Jamael Westman (Tom Moutchi takes over from 9 December), Devlin conveys the anticolonialist appeal of crypto, leading a chant of “Bun the system!”, as well as a populist, cultish charisma.
By the end, any losses have come out in the wash. No one on stage has been seriously changed or challenged, and nor have we. As morals go, “You win some, you lose some” feels like a poor return on an audience’s investment.
• At Bush theatre, London, until 21 December
