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Pictured (L to R): Lucy Whybrow, Sian Thomas; Robin Soans, Nigel Lindsay; Jacqueline Defferary, David Tennant.

Photography by John Haynes.

Direction: Ramin Gray. Design and Lighting: Rodney Grant, Sound: Ian Dickinson

Cast: Flaminia Cinque, Jaqueline Defferary, Nigel Lindsay, Robin Soans, Peter Sproule, David Tennant, Sian Thomas, Lucy Whybrow.

‘Roland Shimmelpfennig’s play turns out to be cool, ironic and almost classical in its structural formality. The most violent incident is when one woman throws a cup of coffee into another’s face, and the play is permeated with an elegiac feel of sadness and waste.

‘The action is set in the 16-storey headquarters of an international corporation. What it’s called and what it deals in are never revealed. The piece is topped and tailed by entertaining monologes by two security guards, one make and one female, who describe both the offices and the company’s corporate TV ad, which consists of a man carrying a woman over a large puddle in a park.

‘Such gallantry is in short supply in the corporation itself. The meat of this 90-minute play consists of three edgy, aggressive dialogues between rivals in the firm, which are intercut by the characters’ private thoughts and confessions, delivered direct to the audience.

‘In the first, Sabine (Lucy Whybrow) is trying to discover from a senior executive, Angelika (Sian Thomas), why she has been turned down for a coveted top job in the company’s Delhi office. The fact that Angelika believes that Sabine has been sleeping with her husband, Kramer, the firm’s boss, certainly hasn’t helped.

‘In the second, a thirtysomething executive, Robert (David Tennant), turns down a proposal from Patrizia (Jaqueline Defferary) for a new TV ad, identical, it turns out, to the one we have already heard described, except that the puddle is now located in New York’s Central Park. The face that these two once had great illicit sex together in Kramer’s office and were both too proud to contact the other afterwards, merely adds to their animosity.

‘In the third dialogue we return to the Delhi job for which both the elderly Hans (Robin Soans) and the thrusting young Frank (Nigel Lindsay) are competing. Yet what is palpable here, as in the two preceding scenes, is the emptiness of the characters’ lives. Hans is addicted to his exercise bike just as Frank is addicted to porn on the internet. And as the three sets of opponents describe their anxious existences, they often use exactly the same words to describe the same experience. These people ought to be friends or loves – not opponents.

‘Ramin Gray’s excellent production, stylishly designed by Rodney Grant, does full justice to a subtle and original work that hauntingly captures the anomie, loneliness a d paranoia of modern business life. There isn’t a weak performance from an outsanding cast, but the barely controlled aggression between Whybrow and Thomas in the first dialogue, and the undertow of lust between Tennant and Defferary in the second are particularly riveting.’

The Daily Telegraph

‘The Royal Court has started its International Playwrights’ Season with a sleekly acted, immaculately directed (by Ramin Gray) German play by Roland Schimmelpfennig.’

The Observer

‘This is an arresting piece, which makes one hope that the Court will import more of Schimmelpfennig’s work.’

The Independent

‘The German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig makes his British debut with this tough, hard-edged play about tough, hard-edged people working for a tough, hard-edged corporation. You never find out what it produces, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is position, position, position; that is, of power or weaknesses. You might think it was a hard, unfeeling play about hard, unfeeling people, but you’d be wrong: under the tough-guy office-bitch presentation lie fears and insecurities, the panic of being overtaken. Sexual relations inside the office have all the unpredictability, even impersonality, of commercial relations. I liked Ramin Gray’s cool, crisp production The actors, especially Sian Thomas, Lucy Whybrow, Robin Soans and David Tennant, are excellent.’

Sunday Times

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