Out Of
Character Theatre Company’s production of Retail
Therapy
http://outofcharactertheatre.squarespace.com/blog/
Out Of
Character’s Retail Therapy starts with a simple sketch. A casual conversation between two people discussing
the failings of the NHS. It’s a nice
gentle opener that settles into a realistic tone. That is, until the reveal these two
characters, grumbling about the NHS, are actually Doctors on their break. This sets the tone for the rest of the show,
taking the recognisable aspects of the world and giving it a clever, often
surreal, spin.
The frantic
rush that surrounds Black Friday is turned into a manic fist fight reminiscent of
a Beano comic. The outcome is the birth
of twins and the disastrous loss of a place in the queue. Other highlights are the ex-Investment Banker
working at McDonalds whose desire to please results in an assassination. Similarly, two cleaners in dead-end jobs are revealed
to secretly be mercenaries (when they can get time off work). An Argos catalogue bonking you on the head can
result in the transformation into a fascist wannabe-despot.
This is a
cartoon alternate reality, based loosely on our own consumer-heavy world of
shops, shopping and business. But it is populated
by people with strange glints in their eyes.
What makes
the show really powerful, however, is when these strange people provide no help
whatsoever to people who do need help.
Instead of supporting a woman who is having anger issues, she is batted
back-and-forth between Nurses and Doctors and Consultants who do more harm than
good. The initial jollity of League Of
Gentlemen-esque caricatures soon proves to be a disturbing Kafka-esque web of bureaucracy
with no redemption. Each sketch as a satirical
bite making the audience take a hard look at the consequences of a world so obsessed
with shopping channels rather than real support and emotion.
Out Of
Character charge into each role with a great sense of humour and play. The sketch-based format is made easier to digest
over the hour by the curiosity of what characters will re-appear, what combination
of actors will work with who, and their commitment to the
recognisable-but-offbeat world of shopaholics.
The twisted
humour has the audience laughing at each and every sketch, but the giggling
soon fades for the final moment when Out of Character present heart-wrenching
facts about cuts to mental health services.
Out Of Character are capable of drawing out the absurd humour of a world
fixated by shopping, and then hitting hard the point that this obsession with
retail does more harm than good. For all
its chaotic surreal nuts and bolts, Retail Therapy is cuttingly honest.
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