Reviews 2014
Reviews 2014
✭✭✭✭✩
by Lucy Kirkwood, directed by Joel Greenberg
Studio 180, The Theatre Centre, Toronto
November 12-30, 2014
“Leaders, thinkers, dreamers, shoppers”
Studio 180 is current presenting the North American premiere of Lucy Kirkwood’s wickedly funny satire NSWF. The play’s title is an internet acronym for “not safe for work”, usually displayed as a warning that the content could compromise the viewer if accessed on an office computer. The focus of the play, however, is not computers or risqué internet content. Instead, Kirkwood focusses on exploitation in the print media, both in its abuse of employees and in its objectification of women.
In the odd structure of the play, the first two-thirds of its 90-minutes take place in the London office of editor of Doghouse Magazine, a men’s magazine featuring a scantily clad woman on the cover and unclad women inside. First we see how friction has developed between the editor Aidan (Patrick Galligan) and his three assistants. Because all three are overqualified for their positions and because of the negative economic climate, they are lucky to have paying positions at all having already worked for years as unpaid interns. Aidan is perfectly aware of this and thus feels he can demand what ever he wants of them since paying jobs are so scarce for young people nowadays.
Aidan seems to be having sex with his personal assistant Charlotte (Jessica Greenberg), who, despite this, belongs to a feminist group even though she is too embarrassed to tell them where she works. Rupert (James Graham) is fed up with Aidan’s manipulative ways. When Aidan asks him to go on another “man challenge” despite previously telling him he wouldn’t have to do another for six months, Rupert snaps and quits. Meanwhile, when lower gofer Sam (Aaron Stern) refuses to write about his planned romantic proposal to his girlfriend, Aidan easily demotes him back to gofer after tantalizing him with feature writer status.
The main focus of the Doghouse Magazine scenes is its new big-boobed find for the cover, a girl selected from hundreds of photos by Sam. The girl’s father Mr. Bradshaw (Ian D. Clark) has many reasons to be enraged, not the least that his daughter is only 14, but Aidan thinks a combination of charm and monetary recompense will be all that is necessary to subdue the father’s rage. The task proves far more difficult than Aidan imagined.
The final third of the play takes place in the office of the chief editor of the women’s magazine Electra, a fictitious British version of Cosmopolitan. Sam, who has been made a scapegoat for the fiasco at Doghouse, is now interviewing for a job at Electra with Miranda (Susan Coyne), the editor herself. All seems to be going well until Miranda gives Sam a test wherein he must find the physical flaws in the photos of three beautiful women. What we learn is that Electra’s goals are nominally to help women be their best selves. At the same time, encouraging women to be their best means advising them how to overcome flaws they didn’t even know they had so that they come to depend on Electra for help.
Kirkwood’s biting analysis of men’s and women’s magazines shows that they both exploit and objectify women. Doghouse turns women into objects for the lustful male gaze. Electra turns women into objects in need of repair that only the magazine and the products it promotes can supply. Just as the economic downturn has made both male and female editors free to exploit their workers, Kirkwood has deliberately set her play in the dying world of print media so that editors like Aidan and Miranda, both aware that their days are numbered, are even more desperate to succeed while they still can. What Kirkwood captures best of all is the executive-speak of both Aidan and Miranda, who exude soothing and nurturing tones that barely conceal their cut-throat attitudes to any form of opposition.
Aidan’s conversation with Mr. Bradshaw is a masterpiece of this kind of duplicity. Galligan masterfully catches exactly the right level of smarm with which Aidan intends to smother Bradshaw’s anger, but when that doesn’t work we see that Aidan has backup plans B, C and D already thought out to suss out any chink in Bradshaw’s armour of indignation and once found to thrust in his dagger until Bradshaw pleads for survival. Aidan’s escalating attacks on Bradshaw are increasing outrageous, but Galligan makes them perfectly believable and never lets down the smoothness of his façade although he lets us see the feline underneath who enjoys calculating how to attack and toy with its prey.
For his part, Ian D. Clark is excellent as Mr. Bradshaw, an ordinary man for whom we feel nothing but sympathy. We admire how long he holds out against Aidan, but it is clear that Aidan is an expert at manipulation whereas Bradshaw is not since he mistakenly believes that honesty and decency will triumph in this corrupt world.
Kirkwood spends little time giving the three younger subordinates much personality. Greenberg’s greatest moment comes during Aidan’s conversation with Bradshaw. Although she has almost no lines, Greenberg manages to communicate silently through a growing coldness in Charlotte’s face and posture Charlotte’s increasing disgust with her boss’s tactics. James Graham’s Rupert is the most outspoken of the three and when Rupert has nothing else to lose the most flagrantly insulting. His appearance in Miranda’s office, which I will not describe, shows how talented Graham is at physical comedy. Stern’s meek Sam hysterically descends into hysteria and self-loathing once he realizes his mistake. In his interview with Miranda, Stern shows a young man only partially aware of the mind games Miranda is playing with him, but so desperate for a job that he is willing to go along with anything she suggests. The Miranda-Sam interview is clearly a parallel to the Aidan-Bradshaw conversation in that both end with the total destruction of innocence.
Denyse Karn deserves praise for her extremely clever puzzle-like set that changes from the Doghouse office to the Electra office in a rapid and most ingenious fashion. Her costume designs help us read the characters’ personalities almost before they speak a word. This fact, of course, is highly important in this particular play where both males and females are judged first by their appearance.
Kirkwood's play is both funny and cringe-making because it so accurately reflects the power games that executives play with their subordinates. While the play’s primary critique is the objectification of women by both men and women, its larger critique involves the society – the ABC1 class that both publications seek as readers – who supports this form of exploitation. NSFW is a sharp, witty exposé of the kind of amoral behaviour that some people even praise as necessary in a dog-eat-dog business environment. Kirkwood’s play is so enjoyable because it shows fierce intelligence combined with devastating humour.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (from top) Aaron Stern and Patrick Galligan; Susan Coyle & Aaron Stern. ©2014 Karri North.
For tickets, visit http://studio180theatre.com.
2014-11-13
NSFW