BIG DEAL

In BIG DEAL, SKaGeN dissects our times and paints a ruthless portrait of who we have become, a quarter of a century into the new millennium.

To this end, SKaGeN adapts the Pulitzer Prize-winning Glengarry Glen Ross by best-selling author David Mamet. He wrote his play in 1982, at the dawn of neoliberalism in the West, under the Thatcher and Reagan administrations. Forty years on, we find ourselves in the world of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Zhang Yiming. The ideology of profit-seeking has lost none of its bite — quite the contrary. It has become all-consuming and even threatens to undermine the very foundations of our democracy.

In BIG DEAL, salespeople make life hell for one another in a ruthless battle for bonuses, leads and their jobs. They manipulate, lie and betray one another without scruples, just to stay one step ahead in the hierarchy. Loyalty and friendship give way to backstabbing, jealousy and the abuse of power. Every character fights with a knife between their teeth — not to win, but simply to survive.

BIG DEAL unravels our addictive and often absurd behaviour, driven by an all-consuming urge for profit and success. Do we actually still want to escape the rat race? Even our attempts to slow down are served up to us via Instagram and TikTok: hot tubs in the Ardennes, purple yoga mats, matcha lattes and carefully curated ‘me-time’.

We are more addicted than ever, and the price we pay is high. Because what if you yourself are in danger of falling into the abyss? What if you can prevent that by giving someone else a nudge?

Following the success of TRIOMF! and the magnum opus DEKALOOG, SKaGeN is once again hitting the road with its expanded collective. And whereas Beckett was previously put under the knife, it is now Mamet who must surrender to SKaGeN’s tragicomic dissection.

BIG DEAL is bittersweet laughter and hilarious despair, virtuoso acting and merciless self-reflection. A production that grates, foams at the mouth and lays bare.