A team of ‘man­age­ment con­sul­tants’ are recalled from their project over­seas in order to work on an urgent pro­pos­al. The ques­tion in front of them — if there was a dead­ly virus that killed the car­ri­er and eas­i­ly infect­ed oth­ers, how would you con­tain it with­out alarm­ing the com­mu­ni­ty? As they start to work through their ideas they begin to won­der — is this only a pre­cau­tion­ary exer­cise or are they design­ing a geno­cide machine?  

The set (designed by Jen­nifer O’Sullivan) is a cheer­ful Insta­gram-wor­thy office with ubiq­ui­tous grey striped car­pet tiles, colour­ful fid­get toys, a bright red bean­bag, office plants, rain­bow ani­mal prints, a white­board, a bar height table sur­round­ed by tall chairs, some board games on shelves, and a water cool­er. Intern Scoot­er (Slaine McKen­zie) wan­ders into the office as the audi­ences files into the the­atre. He doesn’t do much — takes some self­ies, moves some things around. His man­ag­er Han­nah (Lisette Prende) fol­lows him in and imme­di­ate­ly tells him off for not organ­is­ing the meet­ing space prop­er­ly. Her oth­er three team mem­bers burst into the office chat­ting about their flight. Brock (James Bayliss) takes an imme­di­ate dis­like to Scoot­er, there’s a play for dominance…bye bye Scoots. Ted (Paul Kay) wants to get on with the project so he can get to his daughter’s soc­cer game. Sandeep (Jett Ranch­hod) has some reser­va­tions but as a team play­er he’s will­ing to go along with the dis­cus­sion — until he’s not. Direc­tor Devon Nuku makes good use of the stage mov­ing his actors in bal­ance. I enjoyed their quick fire line deliv­ery and what looks like gen­uine team spir­it. Nuku describes them as “build­ing a world that is hor­ri­fy­ing in its banal nor­mal­i­ty”. The result is a very fun­ny black com­e­dy ably act­ed by a strong ensem­ble cast which should prompt us to look at our own ethics in the work­place. 

Con­tent note: con­tains dis­cus­sion of geno­cide

  • Ideation on at BATS The­atre to 6 July 2019