Ridiculusmus BAC OctoberFest

Although the analogy might seem strange, when I think of Ridiculusmus I always think of Shakespeare. Why? Well, the 18th century German playwright and the very first dramaturge, Gottfried Ephraim Lessing, who hated the French Neo-Classical drama that was ubiquitous in his age, wrote that Shakespeare was brilliant because he broke all the rules of drama. Of course, there weren’t any rules for Shakespeare to break, not in the modern sense, nor in terms of the drama to which Lessing was referring more than a century later. Shakespeare lived in a blissful age of experimentation, when playwrights could more or less make it up as they were going along. And this is the analogy in my mind with David Woods and Jon Hough.

Ridiculumus are brilliant, invigorating and innovative because they ignore entirely any of the rules that were laid down for playwrights centuries ago, and which are still being replicated in MA Playwriting courses up and down the country. As a result their shows are always surprising, refreshing and anarchic. They are, in fact, braver than the bard, because they are well aware that the rule book has contemporary British drama in a straight-jacket, but they choose to swim against the tide.

And there is another aspect of their work that is striking. They are in many ways Rabelasian, medieval in their corporeality, reminiscent of those carnivalesque farceurs, so feared by the authorities, who performed in the days before such severe injunctions were invoked on the British body and acting became something one did from the neck up. It goes beyond spit, sweat and shagging, it goes further than fisticuffs. For example, in Ideas Men there is an incidence of what might be suicide by chocolate éclair, or the self-inflicted injury of stuffing oneself with cream cakes as a form of self-loathing, torture, desperation. It is very, very funny, shocking and, as an actor’s sacrifice for his art, almost awe-inspiring.

Measured mayhem is a term which might best describe their work, which does not, of course, preclude some sort of point to be made. A show about a pair of ‘ideas men’ devoid of any ideas is just what one would expect from Ridiculusmus and the ensuing seventy minutes could be regarded as a superb piece of dynamic and absurd nihilism. Beneath the surface of this seemingly random anarchy one could see, if one wants to, an attack on the source of our very British creative stagnation.

It is a pity this was only showing at BAC for one night, though they will be back in the Barbican shortly and, no doubt, coming to a small venue near you. I heartily recommend Ridiculusmus. They are just the antidote we need to the well-funded, well-made plays, pretentiously laying claim to cultural efficacy, that make no impact whatsoever on our sensibilities and are keeping our theatres in decline.

I feel rather like an Oliver Twist with my bowl before some Bumblian Arts Council: “More Ridiculusmus, please, Sir”.

11-Apr-2014
The Sunday Age
Bill Perrett
4

‘If Samuel Beckett had access to psychedelic drugs, he might have written something very like Ideas Men. Performers David Woods and Jon Hough have devised a scintillating and delightful show that combines an almost totally empty situation with an absurdist approach. Two men, the Ideas men, sit at either end of a table . Their brief is to come up with some good ideas, something that is proving a struggle at the moment. Like Beckett characters they obsess about details – lunch, the availability of toilet paper. At regular intervals things take a turn for the weird. One character launches into an increasingly berserk tirade; the actors swap parts, genders, wear their clothes backwards, forget who they are. Brilliant and original comedy.’

“My mother died in Auschwitz”

“well you can’t beat that !”

It’s late in the performance and two corporate idea men have hit rock bottom. They even tried dropping their pants and simulating sex. They are empty, truly empty. Nothing left but to choke down a box of chocolate eclairs and dwell on infinity. And it’s still 90 minutes before lunch break. The production is “Ideas Men” by a company called Ridiculusmus (really just Britishers Jon Hough and David Woods who wrote and appear in this production) Woods and Hough began in 1992 with a uniquely zany approach to comedy and theater and are in Honolulu until Saturday. The show is not for the politically correct. It’s a satire on office life and the overwhelming need to come up with something new, something packaged and slick that will make huge profits for somebody else. That need drives the two chaps in the 75 minute skit to desperation.

Looking like a pair of three button suits that sat up on a long night flight and sporting frightful Beatles wigs, the men attack the stage on wheels, initiating a game of tag on rolling office chairs around a large desk. They sit down to work at computer keyboards, but work seems to be the last thing on their agenda. They kill time drawing lewd doodles. They put their coats and ties on backwards, make animal noises and go for imagined walks in the country. They get stalled in a long awkward pause. But if most men lead lives of quiet desperation, Woods and Hough compensate by turning desperation into an over the top circus act of naughty exaggeration. They attack each other, steal ideas and impersonate widely and wildly. One moment they’re teaching a creativity seminar for the audience. The next they’re blaming their troubles on their mates, their fellow workers and their bosses.

Hilarious though it is, the show is not for the squeamish. At one point Woods photocopies his bare bum and tapes the image to Hough’s forehead. Then, he destroys his keyboard with a hammer. The hammer next becomes a telephone and a call to his wife leads to Woods passionately kissing the hammer while Hough looks on in dead pan disbelief.

Like all classic comedy there is great pain close beneath the surface. These characters seem to be spiritually, as well as creatively running on empty. Nothing is pure or sacred, and everything is open to be exploited, used and wrung out.

While we’re busy laughing at the absurdities, we’re also recognizing the truth beneath the exaggeration and sense that we’re giggling on thin ice. Woods and Hough use humor instead of fear and anger. They hit all the right buttons for laughter, but tears are just a keystroke away.

‘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 likes to 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 appallingly 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 ” creative 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 which stands for I Can Achieve 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.

‘This is a Melbourne International Comedy Festival show not to miss. These two British comedians make brilliant theatre out of thin air, expanding the two-man stand-up into a complex, hilarious, wildly imaginative scenario that satirises the workplace.

In this case it is the ideas department of a large corporation, where deadlines induce frenzy and panic attacks. Liam Brady and Mike Mullet ironically demonstrate their ingenuity in thinking up ways to hold off catastrophe made imminent by their lack of creativity at their actual jobs.  They turn their brainstorming into an elaborate and obviously well-practised game of lightning-fast role-playing.

Liam metamorphoses into John, the boss, an upper class manager who is as boring as he is threatening. Mike alters in a twitch to the confident speaker of corporate creative-babble, before reverting to his usual gormless self in time to catch Sue, the apparently randy telephonist, as she offers herself across the desk.

And so it goes on, a mad, wild adventure that challenges the audience to keep up with the game at the same speed as its participants. The performers manage to send up the sanity-saving office culture as thoroughly as the corporate values that keep them jumping through ridiculous hoops, all in the name of paying the mortgage.

There are layers upon layers of comic artifice to be enjoyed here, including sly glimpses of the real performers, who are establishing a degree of intimacy with the audience as well as assuming a series of hilarious fictional roles, while writing a “play” script to accommodate all these characters.

That it looks as though it is being invented as it goes along is part of its brilliance.’

‘RIDICULUSMUS make me ache with astonishment each time I see them. Their lateral view on language, comedy and human nature is inspired. David Woods and John Hough bring a welcome breath of imagination and theatricality to a Comedy festival dominated by predictable stand up comedy.

The ideas men differs from the English duo’s previous show, Say Nothing, but it has the same compelling characterization and leaps of logic. Say Nothing dealt with the insanity of the Northern Ireland conflict. The Ideas Men is a satire on overpaid corporate ninnies who construct seminars about nothing much from even less.

Liam Brady (Hough) and Mike Mullett (Woods) are two idiotic ideas executives who are brainstorming plans for a creativity role-play seminar.  Not only do Liam and Mike have no ideas, they have no skills, no plan or strategy, no outcomes and even less hope.

Mike (Woods) is an insecure, ineffectual man with scruffy hair, an irritating voice and bad breath. Liam (Hough) is a reserved, critical and occasionally weepy little man.

The Ideas men is unpredictable, crazy, intelligent, inventive and hilarious.’