Writer: Dan Bishop
Director: Dan Bishop
Ironically for a play called Target Audience, Dan Bishop’s new play works superbly when it is satirising the media and everything associated with the entertainment industry, but falls flat when it moves on to what it’s meant to be about, according to its publicity.
Billed as being about a TV company that gets word from Whitehall to adapt their programming to prepare the country for war, it opens with one-time idealistic writer Tobias, played by Henry Calcutt, entering the offices of the production company run by Angie, a Mark Zuckerberg style chief exec played by James Coward, who immediately tries to get him to sign up to a publishing agency that he lets slip is part of the same group of companies. Bruiser (Molly Windhurst), his inappropriately named assistant, then launches into a lengthy list of companies, sub companies, conglomerates and shady multinationals that are also all mysteriously somehow under the same ownership.
The pinpoint observational accuracy continues as Isobel (Rheana Kamula), the office intern struggles with her conscience before revealing that her day job involves trawling through records of true crimes that have yet to be turned into TV documentaries or mini-series.
As the play moves on to cover the ever changing briefs the company have to work to to keep up to date with the latest set of data on what a van driver from Lincoln likes to watch, and meet the demands of their top actor, it is the perfect parody, but then the focus switches to the defence industry. While initial observations about programming influenced by the government the channel supports, will be eerily familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of the current US administration, the play heads rapidly downhill shortly afterwards.
The panic about impending possible attacks disrupts the storyline rather than adding to it, and the wit of the earlier dialogue, along with the character driven comedy, disappears in a play where the situation and setting cease to match up. It never manages to regain its momentum as it plays out to a disappointing conclusion that feels completely at odds with the brilliant comedy that led into it.
Runs until 30 August 2026 | Image: Contributed
The Reviews Hub Star Rating
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8
