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Sophistry The intimate atmosphere of the Burton Taylor Theatre is the ideal setting for Richard Murphy's new play Sophistry, one of the three runners-up in this year's OUDS new writing festival. Eight members of an investment banking team are on a training workshop in order to increase the "synergy" of their work. The programme, consisting of some strange party games, is "dictated" by Larry Winchanski (Brian Stewart, great indoctrination), who is for most of the play only present acoustically. Simple tasks like the "envisaging" and impersonation of animals lay the nerves of the group bare. But the real task is still to come: Billy, a fish, lives in a bucket with a hole and has to be saved. This time members of the team who exhibit weakness are removed from the room. First is secretary Sue Peep (Rachel Fishwick, a convincing nervous wreck), since Billy reminds her of her late goldfish. The team continues to fail to find a solution, and as they do so all their social inadequacies are revealed: second to go, or rather to be dragged out, is the cool Jim Maitland (Franco Woolfe), who turns out to be an alcoholic; he is closely followed by the erratic Tibbington-Wells (John Washington, a stunning performance). Jack Turnbull (Steven Mould) is next to go, a little bit surprisingly as he exhibited the first bit of common sense by just stopping the leak with a finger. After Michelle (Kathryn White), the team manager's private secretary has left, the audience expects some sort of showdown between the cold Kerry Fisher (Claudia Renton, very convincing) and team manager Nick Kent (Tom Eastcott). Yet apart from the fact that she is a lesbian with a lot of common sense, and he's got an inferiority complex, not much emerges. There is no solution to the problem as there is no real end to the play: Billy's dead, Kerry's gone and Nick will have to go soon. Director
Luca Giberti has done a good job, teasing out the strengths of her
actors. There are some quite funny moments in this psychological endurance
test, which make it worth a look. |