Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Ross McCall, Holly Wilson-Guy, Matt Austin, Tom Hosker.
After wowing critics and audiences alike in September with her one-woman spectacular Wolf Red, Elinor Randle has turned her hand once more back to directing and in the biting satirical play Cold Call; she again strikes the perfect balance between brilliant absurd humour and worrying 21st century behaviour.
Cold Call is set in the unrelenting world of a call centre, where the world of direct marketing has taken hold of those who frequent the office and man the phones. This small area of forgotten Hell is presented as a power struggle, between those designated to sell almost anything from tours of Albert Square to the latest line in gardening implements designed to make life easier and those on the other side of the line, the ones who get disturbed at eight in the evening with seeming inane chatter.
For anyone who has worked in one of these soulless places, the recognition of the day to day monotony disguising itself as one up man-ship as one person gets a sale and for the briefest of whiles is allowed to become an even bigger tormentor of those around him will be nothing short of instant and horrifying. To see the delight on one of the faces and subjecting his co-workers to doing the victory dance was both well written, shocking and realistically absurd.
The four actors portrayed the office insanity to the point of riveting and the analogy of farm yard stock and battery chickens was so close to the bone that at one point it was possible to see the delight in the excellent Holly Wilson-Guy’s as she exacted humiliation on her fellow co-workers in a team building exercise.
The sorrow in witnessing one person’s willingness to not conform to the eventuality was palpable and telling and in amongst the madness that steadily grew and magnified made for disturbing entertainment. Elinor Randle certainly knows how to put her stamp on theatre and Cold Call is a compelling statement of 21st century consumerism and the effects it has on the mind.
Ian D. Hall