Help! Productions show ‘Hi! How Can I Help You?’ at this year’s Sydney Fringe Festival, comprising a series of eight new Australian short plays, looked at a fertile source short and sharp theatre, the stressful world of customer service, as seen from both sides of the counter.
The show proved to be a patchy night in the theatre with some below par scripts, direction and performances. This being said, there were still some great things to take away from the night.
The evening was framed around a series of short skits involving a Telstra’s on hold message service operator with the perennial opening gambit, ‘Your call has been placed in a queue and will be answered by the first available operator’. The running gag skit, written by Laura Goodin, played through the night and worked well.
Three of the short plays stood out. Sean O’Riordan’s piece ‘Pizza with Everything’ was a well crafted piece about infidelity. A seemingly innocuous knock at her front door by a woman delivering pizza proves to be a disastrous for a happily married woman. The woman invites her into her apartment to find out that the young woman delivering pizza has been having an affair with her husband for a long time. Pizza with everything, indeed…The married woman is left with some very unsavory scraps! O’Riordan directed his script well, and the piece was deftly performed by Zara Jesdinsky and Janelle Merry.
Jess Beswick’s piece ‘Out the Back’ was a lovely little piece about a side of customer service that I for one didn’t know about! The setting is the front counter of a sales store. The young guy at the counter isn’t dealing too well with a disgruntled female customer. He takes last resort action and tells her that he is just going out the back to find out if there’s anything else he can do. We see him go out to the back room and it’s a whole other world. There are coffee and tea facilities on tap, comfy chairs to sit down on, relaxing music playing…it’s the ultimate time out scene! Little wonder that when he finally does get back to the frontline counter, the woman has long gone! ‘Out the Back’ was well directed by Sepy Baghaei with quality performances by Daniel Hunter, Lana Kershaw and Vincent Serrano.
Cameron McCool’s witty piece ‘Can I Help You Find Your Soul?’ saw out the night and it was a good way to end the evening. A woman who has been working for a long time in a call centre is convinced that she has finally lost her soul, from all the soulless work, and that she is now in purgatory. This clever piece was well directed by Janelle Merry and well played by Emily Walker.
Help! Productions season of ‘Hi, How Can I Help You?’ played a brief season at the Greek Theatre, Building 36 of the Addison Road Centre, 142 Addison Road, Marrickville, on dates between Tuesday 14th September and Saturday 25th September, 2010.