Review: Short Caption for Stick Figures

A comedy about the negative side of office relationships, ‘Short Captions for Stick Figures’ is the first original play of the year. The performance details the story of Warner, the manager of an advertising company, as she is slowly driven insane by her frustrating colleagues.

The play opens with Warner seated at her desk, stress ball within arm’s reach, calling in her ditzy assistant, Jackie, who turns out to be the epitome of a bad employee.  We then move on to the focus of the story:  Bob (played by Jasper Lauderdale), who is being questioned over a sexual harassment claim.  It isn’t clear whether Bob is cleverly undermining his boss, Mrs Warner (Ayanna Coleman), or genuinely cannot grasp the reasoning behind the claim.  Either way, there have been complaints against ‘Odd Bob’ after he was found loitering in the women’s toilets.  Bob and his lawyer (Alex Levine) fight the claims by arguing that Warner is being sexist by not allowing him to be in the women’s toilets, and subsequently brands himself as a feminist who is fighting the gender divide imposed by the stick figures on the bathroom doors. 

The director and the actors have done extremely well to put the production together in just one week.  The play is set in a very stereotypical office environment, with posters on the wall such as ‘don’t just work together; work together forever’, while the employees settle their disputes by sitting on the ‘serenity sofa’. Many of the heavier scenes are cleverly broken up by the wonderfully ditzy secretary played by Emma Taylor. Some of the jokes were quite forced and there was an abundance of corny one-liners, but the real comedy came from the melodramatic performances of the four superb actors.