How surreal have your job interviews been? Would Be Nice Though… – a piece from artists Holly Bodmer and Dot Howard, who together make up Odd Comic – places you in the moments leading up to a job interview that will never materialise. You are the interviewees, the hopeful few who have arrived to vie for a job. From nervous chit-chat in the hallway to upbeat songs meant to psyche us up, the audience is caught between the impending interview and the other participants’ surreal preparations.
An immersive piece of environmental theatre taking place in a real office,Would Be Nice Though… blurs the distinction between what is real and what is theatrical. Only the increasingly odd behaviour of the other interviewees gives away who the performers are. The performance lurches rather than flows from moment to moment, leaving you unsure of where you are. At times you are left in awkward silences and cringe-worthy encounters that excellently capture the feeling of wanting to escape without ever making you actually want to run for the door. An interactive piece which involves a small amount of audience participation, Would Be Nice Though… really shines as the performers react to the audience, improvising around them and keeping the performance feeling very fresh.
Funny and touching, this site-specific piece relies on emotional moments rather than a narrative story, evoking feelings of awkwardness to capture the sense of the job interview world. Unsettling feelings develop throughout the play and, conversely, these make up the most charming element, capturing both the stress of the job race and the impending fear of failure and inadequacy that is only a headed letter away.
Brought to Edinburgh as part of Escalator East, Odd Comic devised the play at the beginning of the financial crisis, staging it first in Norwich Arts Centre. The pair have devised work together before in Norwich, but Would be Nice Though… is their first piece under the Odd Comic name.
The real world location of the office amplifies and accentuates the unusual behaviour of the performers: as the play builds you feel more and more at odds with the surrounding real world. Perfectly set to achieve this, and with particularly strong performances, the characters guide you from moment to moment without putting too much pressure upon the audience to contribute, perfectly balancing the options to interact or observe. Would be Nice Though…is funny, intelligent and at times very touching.