If there is one stat that sums up the millennial condition it is surely the fact that in 1989, when Joe Sellman-Leava was born, the average house price in the UK was £54,846. By 2022, when he started writing this show, it had hit £276,200. No amount of skimping on Netflix subscriptions or fancy coffees is going to change that reality. In fact, he calculates, to save up for a house by eschewing cappuccinos, a millennial such as himself would have to have been buying 27 cups of a coffee a day for ten years.
It’s the Economy, Stupid is Sellman-Leava’s attempt to understand why he’s always broke. With the help of his partner-cum-stagehand Dylan Howells and a breathtaking array of cardboard boxes, he delivers a whistlestop tour of modern economics: the invisible hand of Adam Smith, inflation viewed through the rising price of a Beano, a demonstration of the banking system with forays into privatisation and right-to-buy. There are impressions (most notably of Rishi Sunak, if anyone remembers him). There are magic tricks (expertly performed by Howells). There are meta-theatrical asides to make sure the audience knows Sellman-Leava is aware of his own left-wing biases, conveyed with just enough wry self-deprecation to win them over. And, of course, there’s a Monopoly board.
Nobody could leave this show in any doubt as to the writer’s politics. A polemic about the perils of capitalism and globalisation could all too easily descend into clichés and righteous anger. (Thatcher, am I right?) But this 60-minute show manages to avoid the Occupy trap thanks to two things. One is the sheer overwhelming energy as Sellman-Leava darts from supply and demand to interest rates to the psychology of recessions (“money might not be quite the same thing as maths”), held back only by Howells’ occasional interjection to provide some balance (“so I’m like a regulator”).
The other is the personal story threaded throughout, jumping forwards and backwards in time. The shock of a £6,000 energy bill. His parents’ greengrocers forced into bankruptcy in the 1990s – the fear, the shame, the bailiffs. The ability of his grandparents, a postman and a shop assistant, to afford a level of financial security that feels laughably out of reach to a generation locked in precarity by stagnant wages and rising rents.
There is despair here – and a quintessentially millennial anger, not aimed at individuals but at the structures and trends that have over 35 years or so made it virtually impossible for someone to succeed without parental support; £54,846 to £276,200. That’s not bad luck or personal failing. You don’t have to be a card-carrying socialist to see that something has gone wrong.
It’s the Economy, Stupid
Soho Theatre, London W1. Until 15 March
[See also: Who let the BBC inside Thames Water?]
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This article appears in the 19 Mar 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Golden Age