Uh-oh. Naughty audience member. You’ve crossed a line at work, and now you’re in a seminar with several other filthy folk to learn about appropriate behaviour in the workplace.
Fresh from human resources hell, Allison Pope has joined us to share office decorum do-and-do-nots for simpletons like ourselves. She’s a flirtatious, fag-smoking expert, donning a polyester two-piece that Thatcher would have adored. There’s more than a touch of Jennifer Saunders here. She’s giving Edina Monsoon in Absolutely Fabulous, precariously armed with HR for Dummies. A PR princess in a HR hellhole.
But what can she teach us about being on our best behaviour at work?
We go through training and scenarios that should leave us certain on how to competently navigate professional behaviour in the workplace. But the Allison Pope way is the order of the day. Nudge nudge, wink wink. A little squeeze, and we’re back in the 80s again. Offices filled with cigarette smoke and a smidge of sexual harassment that surely never hurt anyone?
Davies has an extraordinary ability to take on a character. She has a fantastic frenetic energy that is really, really hard for a performer to pull off. Her demonic facial expressions, twitching and jerky physical movements give a real bouffon energy which is particularly impressive. It also makes the character, by design, not particularly likeable. Does this character have a more vulnerable side? Can the audience engage with her wants and needs?
At a work-in-progress stage, there’s lots to think about, and whilst this is to be expected, there’s a couple of moments where the line between character and a tightly-woven routine blur. This reviewer wonders what it would feel like to lose some of the props and the structure and lean in on the fun of the moment a little more? If the performer is having a nice time; the audience can feel that too. Davies is clearly an accomplished actor, and more than up to the challenge.
Cultural Fit? is a familiar, on-point parody of the ridiculousness of human resources, with more than a knowing nod to years gone by. This show itself is at an embryonic stage, but goodness, the potential here is freshly hatched. Let’s schedule a HR review meeting for, say, Fringe time next year? We’re expecting this show will tick lots of boxes.
Reviewed on 16th November
