The nine-to-five drag

Photo by Danielle le Chat

Enter OfficeBLOCK, a series set in the familiar world of white-collar workers and dreary office surroundings where everything is business as usual. Directed by Jayne Batzofin, originally devised under the direction of Rob Murray, the play attempts to make fun of the banal and uninspiring, and succeeds somewhat to shed a new-found magic.

Through situational comedy and symbolic reference, the story is told around a water cooler. Four typecast characters find themselves in a familiar setting of clicking and clacking keyboards, sexual harassments and office politics. Everything is like it should be, yet all is not what it seems.

A loss of morals and a search for the innocent

What is essentially an FTH:K production, theatre which features Deaf and hearing performers, is a brilliantly novel way to view what 1000 words have attempted to say: it sucks. Beneath the exterior of it all, there is a loss of morals and a search for the innocent and otherworldly. Or perhaps there is nothing at all, your mind just gets psychologically screwed, because really, this isn't what working and being human is all about.

Through the use of interpretive dance, facial expressions (kudos to Sinethemba Mgebisa starring as the nervous newcomer), and dreamy non sequiturs, the piece is more than the sum of its parts. And what could have been kitsch is an excellent grasp of office nonsense at its most primal and visceral. Two thumbs up? No doubt.

OfficeBLOCK runs at the Baxter Theatre till the 21 July