Review: Do Not Pass Go @ Studio Theatre, Potterrow

Award-winning physical theatre company Jordan & Skinner brought their touring production of Do Not Pass Go to Edinburgh’s Studio Theatre on Potterrow this week. Running for 75 minutes straight through, the production tackles the little-known feminist history of Lizzie Magie, the genuine inventor of The Landlord’s Game, later repackaged by Charles Darrow and sold to Parker Brothers as Monopoly.

The Studio Theatre offers an ideal black-box home for the production, with clear sightlines, comfortable seating, welcoming staff, and a tidy little bar tucked behind the Festival Theatre. Over the course of an hour and a quarter, performers Melanie Jordan, Amy Helena, and Diane Thornton dismantle the economic systems behind the board game through clowning, movement, British Sign Language (BSL), and spoken dialogue.

Capitalism, Clowning, and Oversized Hotels

Do Not Pass Go approaches economic inequality not as a dry lecture, but as a playful physical spectacle. The three-woman ensemble shares the central role of Lizzie Magie, opening with a prolonged, bittersweet farewell not to a person, but to a tabletop game. From there, the production shifts into interpretive movement and clowning to show opposing tax systems, land grabs, and the shift from Magie’s cooperative vision to Darrow’s cutthroat commercialism.

Fraser Lappin’s minimalist set works smartly around modular, high-impact props. Oversized foot-tall Monopoly hotels held together with Velcro get battered with sporting gear, transforming property accumulation into an absurdist physical contest. Simon Hayes’s lighting and an overhead projection rig deliver running text and historical context above the action, keeping the visual language direct and inventive.

Pacing Potholes and BSL Integration

While the politics are sharp and the staging imaginative, the piece regularly suffers from overstretched pacing. Several set pieces linger long after the audience has grasped the point: an overlong silent game of musical chairs crawls, and the sequence depicting Darrow’s theft of the game plays out twice over. The projected historical exposition also crawls, slowing the room down rather than building momentum. At 75 minutes, the show feels like it holds a tighter, sharper 40-minute critique inside it.

The production integrates BSL directly into the performance rather than consigning it to a corner interpreter. While this inclusion is welcome, some vocal deliveries aren’t as clear, and two people speaking at once undermines clarity. When the performers speak simultaneously over the signing, the overlapping audio turns muddy and indistinct. The dialogue only truly lands when the ensemble aligns to deliver lines in precise unison, creating a strange tension between the intent to be accessible and the theatrical execution.

Overall

Do Not Pass Go delivers a witty, visually inventive piece of physical theatre that rescues Lizzie Magie’s legacy from corporate obscurity, backed by sharp ensemble clowning and striking prop design. Yet despite its brief 75-minute runtime, bloated scenes and redundant comedic beats hold the production back from reaching its full potential.