Do Not Pass Go: Physical theatre confronts the tabletop plagiarism behind Monopoly

Physical theatre company Jordan & Skinner are touring Scotland this autumn with Do Not Pass Go, a 75-minute dissection of how Lizzie Magie’s radical design, The Landlord’s Game, was stripped of its Georgist mechanics, stolen by Charles Darrow, and turned into the world’s most relentless Christmas argument.

Tabletop enthusiasts know the story well. Magie patented her game in 1904 as an educational tool with dual rulebooks: a single-tax system where players cooperated to generate public wealth, and a cutthroat monopolist mode designed to demonstrate the ruin of private land grabs. Darrow plagiarised it, ditched the cooperative rules, and sold the capitalist variant to Parker Brothers, securing a fortune. Parker Brothers subsequently bought Magie’s patent for a paltry $500 to bury the original. Today, Parker Brothers lives on as Hasbro, which owns Wizards of the Coast and Dungeons & Dragons. While Hasbro could easily be framed as an institutional inheritor rather than the initial thief, the corporation continues to gloss over Magie’s legacy. As Geek Native explored when examining the secret history of Monopoly, that erasure remains just as relevant today.

Mechanics, movement, and oversized hotels

Rather than framing Magie’s grievance as a dry historical lecture, the production translates board mechanics into physical clowning and movement. The ensemble, Melanie Jordan, Amy Helena, and Diane Thornton, shares the role of Magie throughout. The play opens with a prolonged, bittersweet farewell, though the characters are mourning the loss of a tabletop game rather than a person.

The physical metaphors are clever when they land. Tax systems and rent extraction turn into movement or silent mini-plays. The minimalist stage relies on oversized props that feel like tangible tabletop components: modular, foot-tall Monopoly hotels held together with Velcro get smashed apart using sporting gear to illustrate real-estate accumulation. Simon Hayes’s lighting and an overhead projector stream historical text and running commentary above the stage, grounding the absurd clowning in factual record.

Pacing issues and audio clashes

Where the production struggles is editorial discipline. The show runs for an hour and a quarter, yet it contains roughly 40 minutes of sharp critique stretched thin by redundant set pieces. A sequence depicting Darrow’s theft plays out twice in full where a single pass would have landed harder. A silent game of musical chairs crawls, and the opening farewell outstays its welcome long after the audience understands the metaphor. The text scroll on the projector also lingers needlessly.

The production aims for accessibility by embedding British Sign Language directly into the ensemble rather than placing an interpreter off in the wings. It works. However, at times two performers speak different lines at once while the third signs, creating a wall of muddled audio. The dialogue only lands when the trio snaps back to clean, unison lines.

The verdict

For tabletop players, Do Not Pass Go is an engaging, physicalised look at the mechanics and politics stolen from a pioneering female game designer. If you attend an evening with a scheduled post-show talk with Jordan & Skinner, stay for it, the discussion unpacks the ongoing social realities of game design and ownership that the script occasionally glosses over.

The piece has inventive energy and sharp visual props, but bloated pacing and vocal clashes keep it from reaching its potential. It remains a fascinating critique of commercial theft, and it is certainly more engaging than an actual game of Monopoly.