Live-streaming from Jericho Arts Centre, Thursday-Sunday to June 27, 2021
Tickets from $26 at www.unitedplayers.com
Posted June 6, 2021
Correction: The This and Here and Now is not live-streamed; it is taped and available online Thursday-Sunday to June 27, 2021
Written and programmed into United Players’ 61st season prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Glenn Waldron’s The Here and This and Now is timely. Act 1 is set in a pre-pandemic period; Act 2 is post-pandemic; and Act 3 is post post-pandemic.
Ever since hucksters sang the praises of snake oil in the Wild West – and undoubtedly thousands of years before that – we have been victims of the Big Sell: outrageous claims of cures for everything from toenail fungus to infertility. You’d think by now we’d be immune to the cure-all promises of magic potions.
(For the record, I’m completely impressed by the speed with which various vaccines have been developed by Big Pharma to knock down the pandemic. One does wonder, however, how much money they’ve made selling the stuff worldwide. This is not altruism.)
Under Lauren Taylor’s direction, this production starts off with a bang: Matt Loop, as Niall Barnett, Senior Sales Manager and Gold Star Trainer for McCabe Pharmaceuticals, pitches Setova, a new McCabe product that’s “3.2% more affordable for age-related keratin disorder” – in other words, liver spots. Man-bunned and turbo-charged, Loop pitches the product to an imaginary doctor as if he were promising life-everlasting. As Barnett, Loop drags in references to his character’s five-year-old son Jake and goes on to show Barnett audaciously taking a family day off for a father/son outing to Diggerland (the kid loves tractors). Barnett makes manipulatively heart-warming references to those “everyday moments” so important in our lives. The character pushes all our emotional buttons before wrapping it up in an effort to sell the product. Loop simply nails this sleazy sales rep.
Standing by Barnett are three new company recruits: Helen, Robbie and Gemma. In turn, they repeat Barnett’s pitch almost word-for-word, only changing certain details: Jake is replaced by various other kids and different destinations for the playing-hooky/day off. Taking notes or maybe awarding grades, Barnett encourages them as they make his pitch their own. The narrative remains the same, the details vary. Gemma (Jessica Wong) comes across as oh-so sincere; Robbie (Ishan Sandhu) is over-the-top pumped; Helen (Evangela Kepinski) stumbles over her lines and needs encouragement.
The mantra they live by is, “Captivate. Associate. Detonate. Kill.” Barnett leads them in the chant as they circle the stage, tossing a ball back and forth. Team players.
That mantra is, as we suspect, portentous. Act 2 turns a corner you will not see coming. And Act 3, featuring the dearest little brown-eyed angel – Kieran Dhadwal – is off the charts cute in the advertiser’s attempt to sell, sell, sell.
Considering our already cynical response to marketing and our mistrust of the pharmaceutical industry in general, how well does The Here and This and Now fare? Reviews from the original production in the UK all say how hilarious the script is. “Fleet-footed, daring, funny as hell. I can’t remember being hit harder,” says WhatsOnStage. The Guardian’s Michael Billington was a little less effusive, writing, “Waldron jumps uneasily from sparky satire to dystopian drama.”
Perhaps this is a show that needs to be an in-theatre experience because the live-streaming version on opening night did not come across as all that funny. Waldron touches on our unhealthy appetite for antibiotics and, hence, the potential for worldwide catastrophe; we all worry about the Super Bug. And we know about the chokehold pharmaceutical companies have on life-saving drugs. None of this is inherently funny and I did not find myself laughing. Hilarious? Not so much.
But the production team keeps it fresh with projections, music and lighting. Functional, simple set. And the performances are, across the board, excellent.
On opening night, however, the handful of viewers actually seated in the Jericho Arts Centre applauded after Act 2. And then Act 3 began. That’s never a good sign. Perhaps if Act 3 could kick in before the audience gets a chance to put their hands together, it might work. But it’s an awkward transition, not easily solved.
(If the current pandemic protocols are relaxed, United Players hopes to have in-house performances of The Here and This and Now before the end of the run.)