Museum of Austerity – Young Vic Theatre, London

Director: Sacha Wares

Museum of Austerity is an exhibition, billed as partial theatre, laying bare the stories of eight people affected by cuts and changes to the UK benefits system. However, this museum is unlike any other. It is told not through the items and memorabilia of their lives, but through holograms and voice recordings from their family members. As visitors arrive, they are fitted with a headset allowing them to move about the museum and witness the holograms from all angles.

There will be very few visitors to Museum of Austerity who have not been touched by this subject matter, and yet, the perspectives given here are so specific, intimate, and harrowing that every visitor leaves a changed person. Even if the knowledge is not new, the experience is so well conceived and the stories so touching that its power is undeniable. The real stories here are all heartbreakingly particular to the people involved, and visitors build real connections with them, even when the larger context involves separate bureaucratic systems.

When walking around the holograms, each person’s story begins as you approach them, and when you step away, the wider context is supplied through parliamentary statements. When you step forward once more, the story continues from where you left off, and this creates a real sense of agency for the visitor. Should one choose to abandon one hologram to hear from another, or stay and listen to it in its entirety?

It is in this interaction that Museum of Austerity challenges its visitors to experience a culpability in the deaths of these individuals. There is not enough time in each visit to hear every story to its completion, and so we must choose who we care about and who we do not. This hits home much harder when one is sitting on the House of Commons-style benches that flank the space. Much like the state, we may tell ourselves that we care about all our citizens equally, but our actions say otherwise. With a limited maximum capacity of 10 visitors at a time, we witness others make these hard choices too, but we also witness the lovingness with which fellow visitors sit with a hologram and cry with them.

Numerous accessibility options are present at the museum, making sure that the headset is not a limit to anyone’s engagement. There are also options to modify one’s experience based on the content warnings supplied. Often, content warnings can result in a feeling of unease when entering a theatre, a sense of regret at having booked a ticket, and a sense that it’s too late now to back out. But Museum of Austerity is different. Something can be done with this information.

Surprisingly, for an experience so short, with a headset that is not entirely comfortable, using rigidly flat-textured holograms, Museum of Austerity is one of the most emotional and format-altering works available in London. It feels mandatory viewing for all citizens. It should, at the very least, be mandatory for every MP.

Runs until 16 January 2026