Winner’s Curse – Park Theatre, London

A new work by Daniel Taub with Dan Patterson, Winner’s Curse teaches its audience about international diplomacy and the art of negotiation. Not a flawless evening, but with Clive Anderson in the lead role it’s an entertaining one.

Winner’s Curse

Do you know what the ‘Winner’s Curse’ theory is? I didn’t before seeing this play. But it’s an idea from game theory. Commonly associated with auctions, it states that the winner’s joy at winning is somewhat soured by knowing their opposing bidders valued the item less than they did. In negotiations, it’s about how, if you make a proposal that is immediately accepted, you know you went in too low. In both cases it’s not about the actual value of something, it’s about perceived value and the rituals by which we arrive at it.

See, I’ve already taught you something. And teaching is the name of the game in Winner’s Curse, a play by former ambassador and peace negotiator Daniel Taub, with current affairs writer/producer Dan Patterson. There are a couple of layers to it. Clive Anderson plays Hugo Leitski, also a former peace negotiator. Leitski is being lauded, and we are the audience to whom he is delivering a lecture. He begins to reminisce about the start of his career, and lo and behold the scenes are played out before our eyes. He goes on to tell the story of peace negotiations between the imaginary but clearly Eastern Bloc (a good idea in the current climate?) Moldonia and Karvistan, interspersing flashback scenes with addressing the audience and setting up experiments. I even did a spot of thumb wrestling with the stranger next to me. Not your typical evening out at the theatre!

An Alternative Model For Didactic Theatre

Watching Winner’s Curse, I found myself thinking about Straight Line Crazy, which I saw at the Bridge Theatre last year. The two plays have very little in common. But when I saw Straight Line Crazy, I questioned the suitability of a topic for theatre when the audience need to be educated on it. Are some things better as long read magazine articles?

This is a similarly unfamiliar topic for most of us, but I didn’t feel the same way about it. And the difference is the playwrights’ approach. In Straight Line Crazy, there was an enormous amount of exposition hidden in the dialogue in order to teach us enough to understand what it was all about. Winner’s Curse is a lot more up front about its intentions. We aren’t expected to know about diplomacy and negotiations. In fact we seem to have come to a lecture about it. The concepts and experiments are simple to understand and added to my knowledge of the world. All in all, potentially a better way to educate and entertain within the same play.

I do think the casting of Clive Anderson had a lot to do with this format working, however. To a UK audience, Anderson has credibility on this sort of political/current affairs topic. And he’s good at audience interaction and ad libs, which bring the lecture components of the play to life. Sometimes better, in fact, at the audience interactions than at segueing to the next scene, which is a little endearing. This is his stage debut, after all. The point being, in any case, that I’m not sure how it would have worked with an actor in the role of the older Leitski.

Final Thoughts On Winner’s Curse

I think I’ve gone and done it myself – a lot of exposition and not so much talking about the matter at hand. So here is my opinion: I found this a fun evening, and would recommend it. It’s a bit different, enjoyable, and you might learn something to boot. I’ve read some other reviews which are not very complimentary, but I think it depends how you look at it. It had its hiccups when I saw it, I don’t see the play itself becoming a hit, but it’s definitely entertaining.

There are some good performances in there too. Particularly Arthur Conti as the younger Leistki. He gets a lot of humour from the role by playing it straight, and pairs well with Michael Maloney’s experienced diplomat Anton Korsakov, who relishes negotiations as an art form. Aside from these two who feel well rounded the other characters are maybe a little under-developed, but I think this is more the writing (where an attempt has been made to include all the types of interest in a peace negotiation) rather than the acting. Nonetheless Winnie Arhin and Barrie Rutter as the Moldonian negotiating team bring light and shade to their characters, and Greg Lockett and Nichola McAuliffe add moments of comic relief.

So if you’re looking for an evening’s entertainment and don’t mind learning something in the process, this is a good pick. If you need your theatre to be entirely polished, perhaps look elsewhere. I for one didn’t mind being part of this experiment.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3/5

Winner’s Curse on until 11 March 2023