Stocktake - 25A

Stocktake – 25A

Stocktake by Jess Zlotnick, directed by Tasha O’Brien heralds a welcome return to the 25A season at Belvoir. Retail is inherently horrifying: the forced cheerfulness, the corporate scripts, the demand that workers absorb the frustrations of customers while remaining relentlessly accommodating. In Stocktake, emerging playwright Jess Zlotnick takes this familiar terrain and pushes it into comedy-horror, finding the monster in the machinery of customer service.

The extensive program notes from Zlotnick and director Tasha O’Brien frame the work as a critique of the dehumanisation of retail workers, both by the businesses that employ them and by the customers who treat them as convenient targets for their frustrations. Drawing on Zlotnick’s own experience, the play exposes a system that creates conflict while expecting its employees to manage the fallout, all in the service of selling more stuff. It’s an astute premise, and one with plenty of potential for dark comedy.

The challenge is turning that experience into compelling theatre. At around 40 minutes longer than it needs to be, Stocktake is overburdened by its various relationships, narrative strands and experiments with genre. The set-up is quickly established, and rather than allowing the story to gather momentum, the production keeps adding layers. The characters are variously unlikeable, and I found it difficult to invest in any of them. Unlikability is hardly a disqualification in horror, but without a character to root for, the emotional stakes can become diffuse. The result is a work whose ambitions sometimes outstrip its dramaturgy.

Where Stocktake comes alive is in its embrace of body horror and the challenge of staging horror live. The line between grotesque and ridiculous is perilously thin, and the genre is always in danger of tipping into self-parody. Some sequences take us by surprise and are genuinely frightening, exploiting the wonderful pleasure of theatre, where the impossible is happening in front of us.  Harry Reid’s sound design is crucial to the atmosphere, adding a macabre texture that heightens a world where something is deeply wrong. But is there a dramatic structure strong enough to sustain it?

The accomplished cast commits fully to the material. Lib Campbell does excellent comic work as store manager Heidi before becoming the offstage voice of the omniscient stocktake leader. Newcomer Lucy X Dunning, on her first day in the store, provides a ray of hope for us all (almost). Bridget Haberecht is particularly strong as an employee caught in the trap, while Megan Elizabeth Kennedy once again shows her skill as a clown. Kate Skinner is dread inducing as customer Karen, and her set piece involving the request for, and granting of, time is a delight in both conception and delivery. It’s one of those theatrical moments best experienced rather than explained.

When the play begins to twist its own rules, shifting identities and unsettling our sense of who is who, the cast’s versatility comes into its own. The performers navigate these transformations with a confidence that adds another dimension of pleasure to the production.

Stocktake has a compelling premise, an adventurous appetite for theatrical horror and a cast willing to take its risks. Its critique of workplace dehumanisation is clear, and the horror sequences are genuinely unsettling. But the production would benefit from greater restraint: fewer strands, sharper development and a firmer sense of what the story needs to tell us beyond what we already understand. There is plenty here to admire, and occasionally to fear. The individual moments are often stronger than the play that contains them.

Review by Kate Gaul

Image: Jane Coates