Edinburgh Fringe Review: The Insider

Zoo Southside, Nicolson Street, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Unexpectedly gripping, brilliantly inventive and technically ground-breaking, Teater Katapult’s The Insider is an immersive masterpiece.

Part of the Danish Fringe programme, the piece looks into the ‘human face of greed’ as it explores the 2017 CumEx tax fraud, which saw in excess of £50 billion ‘robbed’ from European treasuries.

Staged in a perspex cube, two sides of which act as a digital backdrop, this one-man show is far more intriguing than the subject matter at first suggests. For a start, you don’t just watch it, you listen to it… through headphones.

Told from the viewpoint of a young father and tax lawyer working for one of the world’s largest banks, Anna Skov Jensen’s play is a thoughtful reflection on greed and the cost of succumbing to temptation.

As the cynical financier at the heart of the piece, Christoffer Hvidberg Rønje gives a spellbinding performance, synchronising his every word and move with an all-encompassing 3D soundscape that plays through the head-phones provided.

From interrogation room to business meetings, nightclubs to his home and even in the shower, evesdrop as his life unravels. It’s an emotional, physical and technically outstanding performance.     

Every scrape of pen on paper, every movement within the cube, and the lines of the characters he interacts with along the way dance inside your head. It’s like a radio-play with added pictures and makes for an intensely personal, voyeuristic immersive experience.

Succinct direction by Johan Sarauw and Singe Krogh’s glorious set and video design ensure that visually The Insider is a treat for the eyes while a ‘ghost cast’, led by Marion Reuter as Anne Brorhilker, the leading detective, Zoe Mills, as the Nurse, Benjamin Kitter as Hanno Berger and William Halken as the New Investor keep the narrative moving at a pace.

The Insider combines technology and talent in the most ingenious ways. The result is unique and quite mesmerising.

Until Aug 27, 4.30pm

Credit: Líam Rudden Media