Keith Khan’s The Accountants: Review

‘The Accountants’ is a cross-cultural collaboration between choreographers and video designers at Factory International. And there is so much energy and devotion to the project in evidence that the audience can’t help but want to love it. Unfortunately, wanting an artwork to be lovable doesn’t make it so and ‘The Accountants’ adds up to considerably less than the sum of its many parts.

As we enter the auditorium, polite, friendly young people in pale grey suits invite us to scan a QR code and participate in a “live” survey, collecting and collating data on (among other topics) age, number of siblings, postcode and, significantly, our perceived knowledge of China and India. The information submitted is beamed almost real time onto an enormous screen, suspended over the large stage.

The first half of the show seems to be about number-crunching and identity. Twelve dancers – clad in the same pale grey suits – hot desk and gyrate, whilst masses of information, mostly comparing China and India, flash across the great screen above them. Meanwhile, two gigantic facsimiles of an iPhone screen (one stage left, the other stage right) play out more personal interactions between Liam (voiced by Josh Hart) and Aunty Kash (spoken by Shobna Gulati). There are good and important ideas here – and the North West, with its long-established Chinese communities and its strong ties to the Indian subcontinent, is surely an apt place to air them.

Liam is off to find his roots (and himself) by touring India and China. Aunty Kash, though not his ‘real aunty,’ is nonetheless his ‘favourite.’ Liam, we might say, has triple heritage – part Indian, part Chinese, but also very Mancunian. But who is he? Who ought he to be? These are questions he is seeking to answer, helped both by this trip, and by Aunty Kash’s teasing mentorship. She is his elder friend, his sage, his guru. They constantly exchange texts and voicemails. But having no physical presence (they are not, for example, represented by dancers) there is a barrier to our connecting with them.

And all the while, the dancers dance, the vast screen flashes stats and graphs (population growth, nodes of Buddhist belief, healthcare expenditure, wonders of the world, etc., etc., etc…), and text messages appear and disappear.

There is a point, no doubt, about true knowledge and understanding being deluged by information. There is a point, no doubt, about overloading demands on our attention. There is a point, no doubt, about human scale and human needs being overwhelmed and crushed by Big Data. The problem is to represent excess and confusion without thereby becoming excessive and confused.

The interval arrives. It has been a long 40 minutes.

After the interval, the large screen is withdrawn and the narrative attempts something more personal. As iPhone messages blur and fade, the full depth of the stage opens up, though, for the most part, only six dancers, downstage, perform, the rest sitting or standing in the gloomy distance way, way upstage.

As Liam’s disembodied voice moves towards questions of existence, purpose and meaning (i.e. issues beyond the grasp of accountancy) the cross-cultural choreography (Terence Lewis, Marukh  Dumasia and XIE Xin) occasionally touches on excellence, while the intercultural soundtrack of Somatic has moments of beauty. None of this is helped by Simon Corder’s lighting design which steadfastly refuses to guide the eye or assist the mood.

The twelve-strong dance troupe (Asian and Chinese dancers) works tirelessly. The dancers are lithe, athletic and exceedingly well-drilled. There is the essence of something powerful here, but the staging and lighting dilate and disperse focus, rendering the audience’s emotional engagement etiolated.

“What connects us all?” asks Liam at the finale.

Noble and ambitious though its intentions are, it is precisely on this question of connection – aesthetic, intellectual, emotional and cultural – that ‘The Accountants’ fails to balance its books.

The Accountants is at Aviva Studios, Manchester from 4 to 11 May 2024.

Contains theme of death and includes scenes of a sexual nature and flashing lights. Parental guidance advised – Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.