Toxic masculinity and corporate culture are the main drivers of Tim Edge’s play One Of The Boys, a four-hander set in an unspecified company where sales and profits are seen as far more valuable than values or employees.
In just 85 minutes, there’s a lot to reveal. The first ‘twist’, involving Heidi ((Jess Gough), was quickly guessed. The ending was reached through a lot of conniving and a large amount of unlikely scenarios.
Eve (Miriam Grace Edwards) is acting CEO of the company. Her subordinate, Kevin (Daniel Kendrick), is a workaholic sales director but also a male chauvinist pig of almost cartoonish proportions, who rarely keeps his ‘big dog’ away from the fresh meat provided by the revolving door of young female employees.
Drinking, sexual harassment, and misogyny is the daily diet of a workplace that is depressingly toxic. Under chairman Toby’s (Matt Ray Brown) watch, the ship may be profitable but certainly unsteady.
Aside from the character of Kevin being too ‘obvious’, Eve was also problematic. There’s a disturbing section where a case study of an employee ‘laughed out of the room’ for reporting unwanted touching, stalking and bullying is completely defended by her on the grounds the abuser was good at his job.
She’s also complicit in bullying, as is clearly seen, and of using sex to her advantage. That doesn’t give her a free pass as a victim, and it doesn’t give us confidence she will change.
Heidi is also contradictory and hard to like or warm to. Without spoiling the plot, she feels underwritten and her motivation cloudy. If she is so concerned about not repeating the sins of the past, perhaps she would take a completely different route.
As the boss where the buck stops, Toby is at first a harmless flirt with a slightly unwise attraction to ‘pretty girls’, but under the surface, he’s as in it for himself as anyone. I’ve met Toby-types in the workplace, paternalistic chauvinists who see themselves as above the grubby body-grabbers.
The set (by Ellie Wintour) is impressive, with a digital clock that becomes more distorted, a window through which secrets are observed and plots made, and a changing arrangement of tables and chairs, assisted by lighting and physical movement in between scenes.
One Of The Boys would work better it it didn’t play to the genre tropes. I’m not sure a real Kevin would rise so high without a woman calling his bluff or causing him an injury, however temporary. Heidi’s appearance is too clearly signposted, and Eve’s late nights with the boss too predictable.
But, I did appreciate what Edge was trying to achieve in this play, and felt that Lydia McKinley’s direction did add some unnerving elements that took this play away from the predictability of corporate intrigue.
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One Of The Boys continues at the Playground Theatre until 27 Oct – details here.
Image credit: Craig Fuller