REVIEW: Fictional rec-to-rec firm raises laughs in new play
It's December 2011, and the Occupy London protest camp at St Paul's has spilled over on to the doorstep of this fictional rec-to-rec firm.
Self-made from recruitment's old school, Saxon is none too impressed with her new neighbours. The forthright opinions, sharp tongue and no-nonsense, expletive-ridden management style of Saxon (Debra Baker) deliver many of the laughs in this new play, the début of writer Daniel Andersen, who himself spent time working for a London recruiter in 2011.
Andersen fills Saxon Court's office – decked out in liberal amounts of tinsel, complete with details including client emails visible on computer screens and back issues of Recruiter – with flawed characters thrown together in that awkward way that only workplaces can achieve. There's put-upon loser Mervyn (Adam Brown), nice but dim newbie Noel (Scott Hazell), smart but grumpy Nat (Sophie Ellerby), wannabe WAG Tash (Alice Franklin) and the obnoxiously blokey Joey (John Pickard).
Add this bunch of misfits to the battering the downturn is giving the market and a horrifically blocked toilet, and Saxon's finger moves closer and closer to the 'sack' button as the day goes on. Although Andersen packs an improbable number of twists and turns into two-and-a-bit hours on stage, the true-to-life interactions between colleagues are neatly captured and portrayed. Act one shows a morning in the office, as the Saxon Court begin to simmer, and things really boil over in act two as the Christmas party gets under way.
With that blocked toilet, a boob job, Joey's inappropriate banter and the politically incorrect views of Saxon, this play is more bawdy sitcom than it is the “razor-sharp satire” promised by promotional material. But the coarser jokes and toilet humour is mixed in with clever one-liners and unexpected gags; comedy fans might know the feeling of anticipating predictable, set-piece jokes in TV sitcoms; that doesn't happen here. Saxon Court is by no means overall as low-brow as say the Recruitment Banter Twitter feed, but aside from a sprinkling of earnest tension, neither is it clever enough to dig that deep in to what is special or unusual about the situation it portrays – the fact Occupy London is going on in the background is only incidental gag fodder, it's not truly crucial to the circumstances in which Saxon and company find themselves.
While audience members with a knowledge of recruitment will smile knowingly at a few lines which hit at recruitment industry truths, Saxon is a sufficiently ridiculous individual and her company so dysfunctional that surely nobody would take Saxon Court as a reflection of the recruitment industry. Yes, recruiters might well be concerned that a play about awful things going on in a recruitment company doesn't do the industry any favours, but the fact that one newspaper's review of the play compares recruitment to a “genteel form of human trafficking” is a reminder that negative preconceptions about recruitment are already well and truly engrained.
Such lofty concerns aside, Saxon Court is a comedy and for that it has one simple, overarching goal: to make the audience laugh. This it does, and in good measure at that – and if you don't believe me, just ask Gary Lineker.
• Saxon Court runs until 13 December at London's Southwark Playhouse.
