If you bought a ticket for Price of Money at The Albany for an evening of distraction and escapism from days of deeply political news and conversation then you’re off to the wrong show.

Belarus Free Theatre’s show is a fierce polemic on the ugliness caused by cash.

It is also intense, poignant, at times funny, and always clever – perhaps too clever for me.

Even after 14 hours, I’m still struggling to process what I saw and what it all means, which – depending on how you view it – could be a good thing, testament to how thought provoking it was.

Price of Money draws from a number of inspirations: from Aritsophanes’ ancient Greek political satire Plutus, Philip Larkin’s Money, Ben Johnson and 93-year-old Stephane Hessel’s Get Outraged, which became the manifesto for the Occupy movement.

The main narrative thrust is five scenes based on Plutus, which in summary amounts to ‘if you make the poor rich, then they become a***holes’ and ‘capitalism breeds inequality’.

Much of this is told in Russian, with subtitles on screens around the theatre. It certainly lends it intensity – and juvenile humour for the well-placed swears – but there’s no arguing that the constant reading is bloody distracting.

There are also a series of testimonials with characters giving human examples of how money is bad – from the pothead who gets jailed for selling a ten buck joint, to the middle class woman whose family get rich from owning a brothel, and a poor farmer who is denied the chance to get escape poverty by an already rich landowner.

Belarus Free Theatre – many of who have fled oppression in the Eastern European country so know first hand – are entirely convincing and pertinent.

Price of Money contains a number of impressive performances and the sparse-yet-refined monochrome staging of a grand piano and a chandelier combined with evening dress allows the message to be hammered home.

A moment that sticks with the audience is the foul-mouthed embodiment of poverty arguing that she makes people more noble and reasonable.

It’s a captivating show which works hard to pull the audience along with it, though – and perhaps this is just because I’ve been overexposed to shouting Alex Salmond – it did begin to bring on the same kind of nausea I normally associate with party political broadcasts.

While it was difficult to argue with the core message, the extended bringing to life of Get Outraged at the end did little more than make me Get a Little Bit Uneasy.

Belarus Free Theatre’s Price of Money is at The Albany in Deptford until Saturday (September 20). Tickets cost £14 to £16 or £10 to £12 concessions. Go to thealbany.org.uk or call 020 86924446.