The Courier Mail, Brisbane 2004
Fun with the creative class
Ideas Men, Ridiculusmus
Brisbane Powerhouse
Ridiculusmus (Jon Hough and David Woods) are British comedy veterans. They have travelled to Australia many times and scooped up plenty of awards, including some from the Melbourne international comedy festival and the Adelaide fringe.
Ideas men is their latest work, fresh from the UK and this year’s Melbourne comedy festival. Its a superbly inventive play following the hapless plight of two “knowledge workers” Mike Mullett and Liam Brady, who have been given the job of coming up with their firm’s Next Big Idea. Unfortunately they haven’t a clue.
Neither are particularly well adjusted. Liam likesto play with Lego to help his creativity, while Mike has an eating disorder and is bonking the receptionist for good measure.
The utterly pathetic way they try to fill in the hours while keeping the boss happy with their non-existent creativity will be appalingly to anyone who has worked in a large firm or a government department.
Throughout the play the pretensions of contemporary management speak and the rise of the ” cretive classes” are ridiculed with savage efficiency. Role-playing, white board diagrams, financial lingo and meaningless acronyms are all shredded here ( my favourite here is Mike and Liam’s eventual big idea ICARUS whichg stands for I Can Acheive Real Unparalleled Success) at various points in the action, Hough and Woods change roles to play John, their banally evil boss, and Sue, the libidinous office receptionist. John is a particularly amusing character, apparently propelled to his present success after being shot down in the first gulf war and dining out on the story of his heroism ever since.
All the little touches of Ideas Men are spot on: the IKEA office furniture, the swivel chairs which take a real beating, the cheap clock which starts the play at 8.45am, the phone conversations Mike has with his wife while Liam listens in. “Everyone is creative now” Mike opines at one point in the play. Of course he couldn’t be more wrong. As Ideas Men progresses, layers and layers of humour are piled upon one another.
The initial joke is the stupendous creativity with which Mike and Liam manage to be uncreative and from then on the madcap highjinks ensue as things become more disordered.
It’s brilliant stuff, technically impressive and acted with superb comic timing.
Ultimately, however, Ideas Men is not so much funny as deeply unsettling – a sort of No Exit for the Creative classes.
Ben Eltham, The Courier Mail, May 2004
Related pages:
.. Honolulu Advertiser, Hawaii 2004 .. South London Press, (interview), 2001