The Times, London 2003
Ideas Men, Barbican Pit
By Sam Marlowe
3 October 2003
BEFORE this performance even begins we’re in hell. The theatre is full of the racket of commuting — train doors closing, echoing footsteps, whistles blowing. As the noise subsides and the lights come up, the place we find ourselves in is little better. There’s a long boardroom table and, next to it, a whiteboard, on which “inspirational” terms are scrawled — “best”, “forward”. Underneath someone has drawn a pair of cartoon breasts.
Then in burst Ridiculusmus, off-the-wall duo Jon Hough and David Woods. They race around the office on their wheeled chairs, gathering speed and ferocity until one of them topples over. It’s the start of their working day in a “creative industry”.
In today’s Britain, defined by spin and soundbites, ideas are the new commercial product. But how do you yoke natural creativity to the imperatives of the marketplace? And can those in menial jobs really be persuaded that their mind-numbing work involves an element of self-expression?
Such notions come in for sparkling comic deconstruction in Hough and Woods’s one-hour show. As Liam and Mike, the two ideas men in a soulless corporation, they struggle to come up with the Next Big Thing against an impending deadline. They roleplay, swapping characters with such exhilarating alacrity that it’s difficult to know which, if any, are real.
Woods as lumbering, whining Mike ponders when to go for lunch, while the diminutive Hough as Liam intently constructs something out of Lego. Then suddenly, Hough becomes simpering Sue the secretary, object of both men’s desires, before abruptly thrusting his hands into his pockets and transforming himself into the feared boss, John.
This spot-on picture of office life allows Hough and Woods to explore the would-be wackiness and nasty grown-up games that abound in workplaces. It also exposes the way we all act out a role to avoid exposing our real self to colleagues we would never choose as friends.
But while it is a thoughtful piece, Ideas Men is terrific fun, its introspection leavened with deliciously silly broad humour. This show is entertaining, inventive, and, yes, inspired. David Brent, eat your heart out.
Related pages:
.. The Independent on Sunday, London 2003 .. Sunday Times, London 2003