The Herald    Critic's Choice
Neil Cooper
10 August 2002

Middle management. The very phrase conjures up unprecedented fear and loathing among office workers throughout the land. And, in the euphemistically christened industry of human resources, where jobs are shed and lives along with them, never have a section of the white-collar workforce so had it coming back on them. Take Owen and Helene, the perfect couple of time and motion in Vanessa Badham's nasty little comedy, until Owen finds he's made his own job superfluous to requirements, and a life of house husbandry ensues. But, in a marriage where the language of commerce already doubles up for intimacy, Helene's dominatrix-like stranglehold on ever decreasing circles of power collapses in a cannibalistic merry-go-round of supply and demand.

Badham's humour favours the grotesque in a short, sharp shocker of a play that nevertheless manages to make some pretty serious points about the collapse of global capitalism. Because, as every country and western fan already knows, the cost of real love is no charge.