Shift Your Par­a­digm
Reviewed by Lox Dixon

Shift Your Par­a­digm (No Chairs Required) begins by wel­com­ing us into the Dome space at BATS The­atre, for a chair sem­i­nar. The stage is sparse. Two cheap desks are set up, one to either side of stage, and an object (pre­sum­ably a chair) cov­ered by a sheet, sits atop a Per­sian rug cen­tre-stage. I take my seat next to an amus­ing visu­al gag which is ref­er­enced by the actors at sev­er­al points lat­er in the show, a cam­era “clev­er­ly” dis­guised as an audi­ence mem­ber.

Colour-chang­ing lights and 80s pow­er bal­lad rock set the scene for a high ener­gy, high pres­sure sales event. I am seri­ous­ly con­cerned I won’t be allowed out with­out pur­chas­ing some­thing. Zoe (Isabel­la Mur­ray) takes the stage and imme­di­ate­ly lets us in on a big secret via a pre-record­ed video phone call with her real boss Caleb (Hamish Boyle). Her char­ac­ter is a jour­nal­ist pos­ing as a new recruit for Do-Be-Us, the apt­ly named Mul­ti-Lev­el-Mar­ket­ing chair com­pa­ny. Short­ly after, we meet Eric (David Bow­ers-Mason), the soon to be Do-Be-Us Senior CEO for the Welling­ton region.

Eric intro­duces him­self to us through a series of well exe­cut­ed clich­es includ­ing a Jor­dan Belfort “sell me this pen” ref­er­ence. He imme­di­ate­ly brings the audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion we’ve all been expect­ing from this show, and it works well. As the show pro­gress­es, it is made clear that the smil­ing Eric is not as suc­cess­ful as he has led us to believe.

A few video calls from his clients/victims/downstream sales asso­ciates, an acci­den­tal call from a hap­less elder­ly woman (Hilary Nor­ris), and a very clever piece of visu­al work from the pro­jec­tion­ist, shat­ter the thin facade of Eric’s big lie. Every aspect of his life is con­trolled by Do-Be-Us and its unscrupu­lous CEO “The High Chair­man.” His fam­i­ly is wor­ried about him, and the preda­to­ry nature of Do-be-us has left him in crip­pling debt to the com­pa­ny. The main mes­sage of this show is one that res­onates in an era of mis­in­for­ma­tion and preva­lent con­spir­a­cy groups attempt­ing to gain polit­i­cal trac­tion. When you find your­self iso­lat­ed from friends and fam­i­ly, and in the midst of a beliefs-based group that frowns upon crit­i­cal thought, it’s a tough hole to climb out of.

Tri­umphant­ly, the show por­trays real emo­tion­al con­nec­tion, and the uncon­di­tion­al love of a fam­i­ly mem­ber as the key to Eric’s redemp­tion arc. At times, the pac­ing of this show flat­tens, but the dynam­ic pres­ence of The High Chair­man (Kevin Orlan­do) goes a long way towards regain­ing our full atten­tion. There are moments where from the back of this the­atre, bits of dia­logue between Zoe and Eric are lost but this is noth­ing that some con­cen­trat­ed artic­u­la­tion and vocal pro­jec­tion exer­cis­es can’t fix.

The use of the pro­jec­tor and the graph­ics that it dis­plays are won­der­ful, though I won­der if the pre-record­ed video scenes may have been bet­ter as live off-stage per­for­mances. On the night I attend­ed, there were tim­ing issues, and it was dif­fi­cult to tell which of these were intend­ed, and which were a mis­take.

There is a lot to the plot of this show, and much of it is told to us through heavy expo­si­tion­al dia­logue. The writ­ing could use some refin­ing, and per­haps the reduc­tion of a plot point or 3, though I will admit the “fax­man” plot­line was a nice twist.

Shift Your Par­a­digm is an inno­v­a­tive bit of new the­atre, fea­tur­ing some very strong act­ing per­for­mances and flash­es of tech­ni­cal bril­liance. It is a show that with a touch more devel­op­ment could reach the heights of great­ness, and one that all involved should be proud of.