By adopting a retro gaming theme, this second edition of Allotment, a self-styled “arts bar”, resembles one great big last day of term. There are people playing table tennis by the door next to where a big-screen version of vintage video game Pong is being beamed on to the floor. There’s a videoke booth where power ballads are murdered before being beamed on to a screen at the other end of the room with the sound mercifully turned down. For the traditionalists there’s Ker-Plunk, Connect Four and noughts and crosses.
As the evening progresses, the stakes are raised ever higher as we move through different levels, transforming the virtual into flesh and blood reality. A Rubik’s Cube face-off becomes a spectator sport, while, in a VIP booth, we’re invited to take a chance on a card game where the dealer always wins. At the bar itself, Allotment Challenge Cards are issued every time you buy a drink. “Try harder next time,” mine baldly stated.
Allotment is part of a recent vogue for interactive art forms that blur boundaries between audiences and practitioners. Like the retro-kitsch easy-listening clubs it resembles, it taps into a desire to connect via simpler, more innocent forms of entertainment, and is all the more comforting because of it. Next month, however, there will be a new theme, and all this may change. Just remember, it’s not the winning, but the taking part that counts.
Star rating: ****
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