★★★★

“The performances and the dynamics are gripping”

The time is now. The setting is the evocatively named small town of Stillwater which, we are told is located ‘wherever that may be’. Although it is clear we are in South Africa. But switch the accents and we could be anywhere in the world; from the Redneck belt of the Southern US to a provincial English backwater. The poignancy that oozes from Amy Jephta’s one act play, “A Good House”, is universal. The smalltown sensibilities that fester unchecked on a microscope slide are magnified into a thrilling and acerbic dissection of community politics. Bitter, sweet, dangerous and funny; it challenges and twists our expectations.

Sihle (Sifiso Mazibuko) and Bonolo (Mimî M Khayisa) are new to the area. They are getting to know relative old timers Chris (Scott Sparrow) and Lynette (Olivia Darnley). It is, in fact, two years since Sihle and Bonolo moved to the neighbourhood: a telling fact. A brief, highly charged prologue precedes the opening scenes in which Sihle and Chris first meet each other under different circumstances. It sets up the dynamics and highlights the innate and institutionalised racism that is embedded in the tarmac of the residents’ matching driveways. We think we are in Mike Leigh territory for a moment. Wine is slowly (alas too slowly) poured and polite conversation trips over awkward faux pas. But Jephta pulls it out by the scruff of the neck, while Nancy Medina’s direction cracks the whip, drives out the Pinteresque pauses and sends it galloping off through the overlapping dialogue.

Sparrow’s Chris is clumsily ‘right on’ and obsequious in the extreme. We quickly know that he can’t be trusted. Similarly, Darnley’s over-eager Lynette is a Cape Town Sloane Ranger – if such a thing exists. Sihle and Bonolo have sussed them out. A freeze-frame device intermittently sets certain characters in suspended animation while the others are free to vent the true feelings that lie hidden beneath the chit chat. The performances and the dynamics are gripping. Mazibuko fills the stage with the imposing figure of Sihle, seemingly – and only initially – compliant with the reactions provoked by his skin colour and background. Khayisa’s portrayal of the no-nonsense Bonolo is a master stroke that surprises us with some refreshingly unexpected views on society and race.

In their suburban community, a mysterious shack has sprung up – the inhabitants nowhere to be seen. Speculation abounds as to who is responsible for this eyesore, and with this speculation the petty bigotry feeds on itself and multiplies. Andrew (Kai Luke Brummer) and Jess (Robyn Rainsford) are the couple most affected, the shack being on their doorstep. Brummer and Rainsford are a perfect match depicting the ‘perfect suburban couple’ – in other words gauche and full of gaffes, embarrassing indiscretions, bigotry and fanaticism.

The shack, although a real structure, is also clearly an allegory. The anonymity of its occupants is seen as being dangerous. Fear abounds, naturally. The writing and the performances ridicule and make a mockery of it all, quite rightly, but also highlight the conflicts and the tensions. The petty prejudices cut far deeper than overt racism. We get a real sense of the institutionalised racism that breeds in these small-town minds that, if left untended, can grow like knotweed.

“A Good House” is a very modern satire. Its façade is a comedy but behind its closed doors lies quite a different story. If I were you, I’d think twice about borrowing a cup of sugar in Stillwater. But I wouldn’t think twice about seeing the play. Just be prepared to find splinters of glass mixed in with the sugar.

THE EMPLOYEES

Queen Elizabeth Hall

★★★★★

“a chance to see one of Europe’s edgiest directors bend time and space to his liking, and ours”

The Employees, an immersive, promenade style production by acclaimed Polish director Łukasz Twarkowski, is now in London, playing in the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank. This lengthy, dreamlike, multimedia creation, based on the science fiction novel of Danish writer Olga Ravn, will appeal to a variety of audiences. The best way to experience this show is to be drawn in without any expectation, and simply allow it to unfold. To be drawn into this world of flashing lights, pounding music, and moments of astonishing intimacy between the actors and audience via the medium of handheld cameras, projected onto a variety of screens.

Audiences for The Employees are free to move around on stage and the auditorium as they wish, for the entire duration. We are invited to take notes, take photos (except for moments of cast nudity), and examine the events of the show from a variety of perspectives. The actors themselves wander on and off stage. Sometimes they dance. Sometimes they sit, and meditate. While we can’t actually enter the glowing box on stage which represents the living quarters of the crew on a spaceship, the videos give us a sense that we are also players in this show. We are part of the drama, as the actors stare intently into our eyes in moments of startling intimacy. They ask us to consider their dilemmas, their emotions. There’s a lot going on.

There is not so much a story, as a situation, being presented in The Employees. We are plunged into a situation where a group of humans are living with a group of humanoids that look exactly like them in every detail. The only way to tell whether a character is born, or manufactured, is by the identifying code on their clothes. A two digit number designates a human. Add a letter—a lowercase letter—and you have a humanoid. In this unnatural space, and on an unspecified mission in outer space, the humans are tasked with keeping track of any anomalies in their robotic doppelgängers. The mysterious Organization, their employer, is a disembodied voice instructing all the employees on their jobs. But the humans, it turns out, are the disruptors, the breaker of rules. They are lazy, duplicitous and pleasure seeking. While they appreciate a working environment that is apparently better than on the Earth they left behind, the humans still try to bend the rules. The humanoids in contrast, are constantly thrown into situations of existential doubt, when their primary objective is to become self aware. All kinds of messy emotions begin to emerge as the humans attempt to make the humanoids more “human.”

On one level, The Employees could be seen as a satirical take on late stage capitalism. It is a show that would delight the late David Graeber, author of Bullshit Jobs. Fans of the great Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem will also find many points of connection in the story, and the satire. Twarkowski’s work is asking big questions, all dressed up as a multimedia production where the audience and the actors, via live performance and video projection, perform in a playing space lacking the usual boundaries of a stage. Time is suspended, apart from three short breaks of three minutes each—a large digital counter on screen literally marking the seconds as we get up, stretch, move to a different location. The director, actors and technicians keep our sensory perceptions so busy that we don’t really notice the lengthy playing time. As we try to figure out the developing relationships between human and humanoid, the ultimate irony is that we don’t realize we have been co-opted into the Organization’s work project as well.

Perhaps the greatest achievement is that in the process of considering the dilemma of manufactured creatures without emotions, we develop a heightened appreciation of our own. Both good, and bad. Perhaps the saddest moment is when the robots realize that they can never experience birth. Watching children play becomes a torment to them. Contrast that sadness with a hilarious moment when the spotlights and the overhead lights of the Queen Elizabeth Hall suddenly reveal themselves to be sentient and launch into a good moan about how overworked and under-appreciated they are. All these perceptions feed into the overarching theme—that of the soulless nature of meaningless work. Or, to put it another way, work in search of meaning that is always flawed, and always incomplete. The Employees is a darkly dystopian warning on the predicament of twenty first century workers ensnared in the illusory promises of robotic capitalism.

And if this is too philosophical, too angst inducing a theme for evening entertainment, see the show anyway. It’s a chance to see one of Europe’s edgiest directors bend time and space to his liking, and ours. If there’s one criticism to be made of this production, it’s that the Queen Elizabeth Hall is probably not the ideal venue for a show that really needs to take place in an intimate dance space like a disco. Because the only way to escape an oppressive workspace is to groove on pounding sound, and to dance, right?

A GOOD HOUSE

Royal Court

★★★★

“The performances and the dynamics are gripping”

A GOOD HOUSE

Royal Court

Reviewed on 17th January 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Camilla Greenwell

Previously reviewed at this venue:

A GOOD HOUSE

A GOOD HOUSE

A GOOD HOUSE

THE EMPLOYEES

Queen Elizabeth Hall

★★★★★

“a chance to see one of Europe’s edgiest directors bend time and space to his liking, and ours”

THE EMPLOYEES

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Reviewed on 16th January 2025

by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Natalia Kabanow

Previously reviewed at Southbank venues:

THE EMPLOYEES

THE EMPLOYEES

THE EMPLOYEES