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.