The Performance Corporation, well known for their award-winning historical adaptations, have launched right into the contemporary, corporate world for their latest piece 'Power Point.' Audience members register for the conference in the Camden Court Hotel, receive a hefty information pack and name badge and settle into the seminar room. But anyone secure in the world of Power Point presentations, team-building events and corporate catchphrases, is about to be shocked. 'We live in baffled times,' Mary (Clare Barrett) tells us before introducing us to speakers Jack and Jill, who are ready to guide us through our troubles. Jill (Lisa Lambe) is all power suit, scarlet-soled stilettos and sleek hair. Bespectacled Jack (Alan Howley) is ready to motivate the room, and begins by bar charting our personal regrets. We are led through the primary tools of business: panic and emotion. Fairy tales are used as metaphors for dealing with life and we're told that everything will be different in the future. So far, so good. The audience are engaged, responsive, alert. But things turn a little strange when Jack and Jill's son Sonny (Hilary O'Shaughnessy) arrives unexpectedly. They haven't seen him in some time, and he has no time for their philosophies, accusing them of trying to sell hot air as pre-heated oxygen. It could be argued that, currently, the corporate world is an easy target for ridicule, but this piece uses the essential theatricality of the motivational speaker to explore, expose and create something bigger. Overhead projectors cast massive, looming shadows on the partition walls of the room; at times we are trapped completely in a grid of lights. We are led through a vision of the future: what could be, what may be. The audience has to question, consider, decide whether to dismiss or to worry. Is it true that all we want is a good nights sleep and a quiet life? Throughout, complex and stunning graphics (Evan Flynn & Asako Mishio) run on the screen behind the performers. Faster and faster, they move and change until the final, flashing signal declares 'Input Lost'. Amid the mayhem, there is a spell-binding monologue from Sonny about his childhood escape and a collision with the edge of the universe. Later on, he launches into a tirade, paper bag over his head, in mock-Russian. When things seem to be getting completely out of hand, Mary reappears with tea, coffee and biscuits in plastic wrappers. By then, the audience has no time for such niceties. At an illuminating post-show discussion, writer Tom Swift and director Jo Mangan rapidly dispensed with the class-room layout of the room to form a casual circle before explaining the shift the company had made from earlier work. Swift explained how he wrote the original piece, an adaptation of a French story story 'Au Bout de Souffle', and gathered the cast together for two days development work in July. By the end of the two days, the script had lost all historical references and had made the leap into the contemporary all by itself. His interest, it seems, is in that phrase 'baffled times'. Not baffling, but baffled. He has noticed how we seem to make collective decisions, based on the external environment. Currently, he observes, all Irish people want to be socialists because of the economic circumstances. The notion of flipping ideas to suit ourselves, and to correspond to the environment, was the impetus behind the development of the piece.According to the actors, the fascinating part of the performances has been the ease with which the audience get involved. We put up our hands to be counted, we mime the windscreen wipers to wipe away our preconceived ideas. People, perhaps, are eager to be convinced, open to being brain-washed and there is some disappointment when we reluctantly have to accept things are more complicated. The biggest laugh of the performance came from the prediction that the Internet would die, alone and unloved. The ending, when the artifice slips into a moment of human reality, is calm and considered after a barrage of ideas and frenetic action. It has the tendency to fool you into thinking that something has been resolved, which is definitely not the case. But whatever your predictions for our future plight, this seminar is for everyone - boasting superb performances, stunning design and interesting ideas energetically expressed.
