Culture Wars
Luke Robins-Grace
April 2003 (online)

Capital

Van Badham's satirical look at the world of the spin-doctor is an hilarious exercise in exaggeration and subversion.

Billed as a 'savage satire on US imperialism', Capital is a comedy of two PR execs spinning the story of their lives, showing us how oblivious and yet intelligent great liars really are.

Footage of US marines murdering and raping women and children in post 9/11 Afghanistan is about to be released. Jim and Bob have 30 minutes to explain what was 'really' going on. In their swanky New York office they go through a bizarre series of role plays, SWOT analyses, and conceptualisations to put a positive spin on how crack smoking marines came to commit ultra-violence on an Afghan school.

Their technical PR skills are finely honed. Bob is the man who helped Shell with the slogan 'Can the Ogoni people put your car back on the road?'. Could the marines have been smoking crack for medicinal purposes? Are they still alive? Do you want them to be?

Jim and Bob's skills as PRs are at comical odds with their brainwashed Yank ignorance. 'The brand name of the USA is at stake' says Jim. Anxious to show his patriotic credentials Bob replies, 'I don't even know where Vietnam is sir'. Simon Darwen (Bob) and George Perrin (Jim) make a great double act and produce some very well timed slapstick. But the catch phrases are what show Badham's talent as a subversive.

To an audience recently bombarded with 'weapons of mass destruction', and 'unlawful combatants', Jim explains in eerie newsreader style that by killing children, the marines are 'stopping the cycle of terrorism before it begins'.

With a play like Capital, Van Badham could easily be cast in to a student activist, lefty-trot, playwright mould. At 27, she is a former Australian National Union of Students president and, according to the programme, 'is regularly seen on television being biffed by cops at demonstrations'.

And yet she seems less prone to polemics than most political humourists. What she has contributed to the nexus between politics, comedy and art is refreshing. At a time when political satire often lends itself to vulgar morality characterised by the likes of Michael Moore and Mark Thomas, it is encouraging to see the satire stand alone.


Morning on a Rainy Day

For anyone who has ever loved, lost or married a fuck-buddy, this one will ring bells until your ears bleed.

Morning on a Rainy Day is a story we all know [speak for yourself - Ed.], and the dialogue is so natural it is like putting on an old sock. The setting - a post-coital bedroom sprawl - is completely authentic, and the performances are outstanding in this 20 minute naturalistic comedy.

After Polly announces her impending marriage to Eric, she and Ben work through their nine-year association as friends and lovers to the point where they must nail down the parameters of their relationship once and for all. Ben has always been footloose and fancy free, regularly two timing his girlfriends with Polly, yet she has carried a torch for him since day one.

If it sounds like writer Van Badham is going over old ground, do not be put off. Sally Proctor (Polly) and Paul Jellis (Ben) do a superb job of carrying the audience through the intimate game of cat and mouse as they chase around the question: 'Who loves who and who needs the other more?' right up to 'decision time'.

Along the way are some hilarious quips at the ineptitude of the commitment-phobic male. Polly recalls when she told Ben she loved him at age 15, and he replied: 'I feel that the confusion I am experiencing is a result of your perceived transformation of my role'.

Light-hearted as this is, Ben has to face the possibility of losing Polly altogether as they agree they cannot be friends without ending up in bed together. 'Marriage is forever,' she says. 'Nature always triumphs,' he replies.

Ben and Polly are predictable stereotypes, but this is in no sense a cop-out. Morning on a Rainy Day is a tight, astutely written play performed by a brilliant cast who engender a genuine empathy for their situation.

Van Badham has clearly treated her creations sympathetically - although Polly can be a bit of a wallflower and Ben a bit of a dog, neither is chided for it. To the uncommitted generation, she is simply saying, there comes a time when you must ask yourself what you really want.


Kitchen

The conflict between our identities as humans and our roles as widget makers goads and entertains in equal measure. This is why the world of work is a popular back-drop for black humour. Van Badham's Kitchen gives a gut wrenching twist to the formula as her surreal comedy explores a domestic home-life run within the framework of an absurd and de-humanising middle-management mindset.

According to the PR blurb, Kitchen deals with labour relations, globalisation and is a 'blitzkrieg battle of the sexes'. But the play goes beyond this explicit remit. It depicts a battle for power and shows how life's winners wield it over life's losers.

After Owen loses his job as an HR manager, his partner, Helene, also an HR manager, divides their joint liabilities and hands him a bill for £48,000. She then lets him pay his debt by cooking a cleaning for her - 'This domestic situation is long overdue for a regrowth.' Formerly known as 'the machete' for building a career on down-sizing and rationalisation, Owen is now the stay-at-home gelding, derided even for his attempts to find another job.

At first glance this could indeed be the 'blitzkrieg battle of the sexes', as the male is forced to adopted the uncomfortable moniker of the domestic, but the gender flip, while good for a few laughs, is a peripheral aspect.

Emma Forster plays Helene with such force that she takes her character beyond the have-it-all power-chick hell bent on avenging centuries of oppression. Moreover she embodies the demeaning boss, the patronising parent, and the playground bully to become the definitively degrading tyrant. She micro-manages Owen's domestic chores and monitors productivity with prescriptive HR strategies and business park double-speak, almost Orwellian in its insidious, contrived logic.

By creating this ridiculous caricature, Van Badham shows she has given some serious thought to the dynamics of the modern workplace. Like the modern HR manager, Helene holds a paradoxical disdain for the workers. Whilst needing them to justify her existence, she calls them maggots and longs for the day when there is just one worker pushing one button - the culmination of time and motion studies, rationalising and outsourcing.

'Pick out the smart ones,' she says, 'and offer them a choice between their jobs and their principles, and it doesn't matter which they pick - either way, they're broken.' As if to show how redundant are modern attempts at unionisation, Owen goes on strike only to cross his own picket line when he finds Helene has padlocked the fridge. Badham's critique of the middle-management mindset and her analysis of labour relations is spot on.

At one level, this comedy is about how ludicrous it would be to bolt a codified management framework on to what should be a spontaneous, unregulated human relationship. At another level it shows how divisions of labour and economic power can determine relations between individuals. Either way, Badham's references to the world she disparages are clearly key to her work.

Thankfully Kitchen does not come across as quite so sanctimonious, chiefly because it does not rely on blatant political moralism and instead focuses attention on the tensions between the two characters. So much so that, for a short comedy, Kitchen bears all the hallmarks of an epic psychological horror. It is a thoroughly dark vision, and well worth the watch until its gruesome conclusion.

Read this article on Culture Wars website.