Reviews of NETWORKNOTWORK
Mark Crees
In their latest production at Ilfracombe College, Studio Theatre take us into the maddening world of early morning business meetings. Written and directed by Robert Zarywacz, Networknotwork‚ introduces us to group of highly strung entrepreneurs who gather together each week over breakfast to share marketing strategies, contacts and many fried sausages. It soon becomes clear, however, that none of these twelve outrageous personalities were ever designed to work in perfect harmony.
The play takes pace during one of these notorious early breakfast sessions and includes a number of recognisable sitcom types. We get to know Richie, a slick and cynical insurance salesman; Isobel, a dynamic PR consultant and Adele, a cool and mysterious tax inspector whom nobody trusts (for some reason). Barry, a nerdy life coach, was played with great comic
effect by Tony Parker who sustained a masterful collection of sideways glances and nervous twitches throughout the play. I couldn‚t work out if Barry was based on Mr Bean or John Major. Perhaps both.
As the meeting progresses, tempers become increasingly frayed until all dissolves into mass hysteria and mass resignations. Yet the most explosive scene is reserved for the play‚s closing seconds. I can still see the entire audience literally jumping in their seats.
Networknotwork is quite an ambitious production for Studio Theatre to stage. Despite using quite a large cast, the script attempts to give equal time to every single one of the main characters. Robert Zarywacz must have been especially delighted that the opening night was such a success. Robert wrote, directed and produced this play and I left only hoping that it wasn‚t based on his own working life. Satirists have always enjoyed exposing the shallow rhetoric of management-speak; any writer today will have a hard time trying to find new jokes for this kind of setting, especially after the sheer brilliance of The Office. In this respect, Networknotwork was pretty familiar territory, but it was also great fun.
Mark Crees
