Creators: Anita Brokmeier, Kate Taylor Hunter, Felipe Jara, Devaki Rajendran, Claudia Shnier and Chloe Shyan
Imagine if the relentless sex and gore of Game of Thrones were crossed with the surreally sinister vibe of office-based TV drama Severance. Throw in some rats and Roman emperors and then picture the whole weird combo staged by physical dance-theatre experts Complicité, and you might begin to get an idea of what watching RATKING is like. The Lab Rats are an agile, dynamic ensemble, equally able to pull off snarky corporate dialogue and blood-soaked Roman rituals.
The set is a mobile table, which serves variously as podium, altar, temple or tomb, and six nifty wheeled chairs. The only props are a basket of strawberries and six keyboards, both used to great effect in a series of tense sequences. The keyboards add an unsettlingly manic tapping noise to a brilliantly designed soundtrack. There are songs and chants, live and recorded, the sound of squeaking rats and the ominous crash of thunder. A pulsing beat often underscores the action. An initial dumbshow, suggesting dynastic murder, is reminiscent of the dumbshow in Hamlet, where it prefigures the play-within-a-play that Hamlet nicknames “The Mousetrap”.
The rats are conjured only through their glowing red eyes. One scene involves a pair of adult rats meeting, mating, and producing a litter of babies, all represented solely through pairs of torches and sound effects. This young ensemble creates highly skilled physical theatre. The movement sequences are fluid and innovative, enacting sex, birth, death, urination, violence and computer coding. White tunics, dark jackets and a single imperial gold circlet serve as costumes for all the characters. A voiceover by Nathan Gregory channels the corporate overlord, directing the workers to compete against each other in the service of “the cloud”.
The rats, the Romans and the workers are clearly facets of a single survival theme, but the play’s main drawback is that its central ideas are not very clear. There are satirical elements, highlighting the soul-destroying nature of late capitalism. There’s also a montage of voices, including Donald Trump (“only I can fix this”), representing autocracy. The rats are surprisingly cute, but are also a terrifying metaphor for the universal and timeless savagery of our instincts. “Time is not linear. Power is,” runs the mantra. “How can we break the system when we are the system?” asks the play and it sounds like a great question, but the definition of “the system” is so vague it’s sometimes meaningless.
The play is part of this November’s Voila! Theatre Festival and fits well into Voila’s annual celebration of ground-breaking new drama. Powerfully staged and deftly performed, RATKING is an innovative, watchable piece of theatre from a very talented group of players.
Reviewed on 9 November 2025
